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ANSWER 



TO 



HUGH MILLER 



AND 



THEORETIC GEOLOGISTS. 



BY 

THOMAS A. DAVIES, 

AUTHOR OP " COSMOGONY OR MYSTERIES OP CREATION, BEING AN ANALYSIS 
OP THE NATURAL PACTS STATED IN THE HEBRAIC ACCOUNT OF CREA- 
TION, SUPPORTED BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXISTING 
ACTS OF GOD TOWARD MATTER." 



NEW YORK: 
RUDD & CARLTON, 130 GRAND ST. 

MDCCCLX. 



.Ess- 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, 

By THOMAS A. DAVIES, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of 

New York. 



SAVAGE & M°CREA, STEREOTYPEKS 
13 Chambers Street, N. Y. 



TO 



FRANCIS VINTON, D.D 



I have taken the liberty of dedicating this work to 
you, not merely for the pleasure it affords me, but in 
the hope that it may impose on you the duty of shed- 
ding the Christian light of knowledge, upon the fossil 
and its dependencies, which your early education and 
abilities pre-eminently qualify you to perform. 

"We have, in former days, stood side by side in the 
ranks of the soldier, and in the academic hall at West 
Point ; and though now as a private, I sound the alarm 
against a vast crowd of geologic sappers and miners, 
who are under the very citadel of our Biblical Chris- 
. tian faith, it belongs to you and to others, to penetrate 
below their depths with counter-mines of knowledge. 



16 DEDICATION. 

to drive them from their positions, and to change the 
current of popular education, lest geologic error in 
faith be stereotyped upon the growing mind of the 
world, by dint of oft assertion, and little contradiction. 
I am your friend 

and servant, 

Thomas A. Davies. 

New York, January, 1860. 



TO THE READER 



The overflowing tide of popular opinion which nov- 
elty excites, has met with no sensible abatement, but 
still continues to rise higher and higher, as the geolo- 
gists proclaim to the world that they hold the scien- 
tific key which unlocks the deep vaults of Nature en- 
closing the mysteries of Creation. 

Assertion, to some minds, is proof; especially if that 
mind be stimulated with the hope that such assertion 
is true. To the world at large, which takes it on trust, 
it is wisdom, until shown by information to be folly. 
When, therefore, the geologist asserts to his audiences 
of listeners that he can see with his telescope of sci- 
ence what it is well known no man has ever yet seen 
— the manner and time, how and when, forms of matter 



18 TO THE READER. 

were introduced upon this planet — there are numbers 
who assume that assertion to be true ; for they them- 
selves do not understand why the geologist can not 
see what he himself may imagine he does see. 

The object of this work is, to show that he has no 
more seen the beginning than he has seen the end ; 
that what he declares to be science, is simply a matter 
of faith; that this faith is inferior to the biblical 
Christian faith, which the geologists are endeavoring 
to overthrow and annihilate, if not in all its parts, at 
least in its foundation and material element. The 
weight of the argument, as may be judged by the 
title, is directed against the productions of the late 
Hugh Miller, which bear upon the overthrow of the 
biblical Christian faith. He was the first geologist to 
lead off in an open and avowed attempt to eliminate 
portions of the Bible, and to substitute therefor his 
geologic version of the "Footprints of the Creator;" 
apparently never reflecting that the one is in language 
which all men may read, while the other is in hiero- 
glyphics which no man can with certainty decipher. 

The most unpleasant portion of the task is the an- 
swering him who can not answer in return, if we do 



TO THE READER. 19 

him injustice. It is not, however, the man of whom 
we shall speak ; but of the vital principles which live 
on every page of his last publication, and which have 
spread through the land as though printed on the 
wings of light. For the purpose of showing the false 
grounds of his position, and those of geologists gener- 
ally, we endeavor to explain the origin and nature of 
the fossil ; and, to this end, we divide all existing fos- 
sils on earth into those which were pre-Adamite and 
those which are post-Adamite. 

There is no diversity of opinion as to the origin of 
all fossils admitted to be post-Adamite. While the 
geologists claim that all ' pre-Adamite fossils were pre- 
ceded by plant or animal life, and have been the sub- 
jects of development, the biblical Christians and strict 
constructionists claim that all pre-Adamite fossils were 
made by creative fiats. Thus, there are two classes of 
pre-Adamite fossils — the geologic or development pre- 
Adamite fossils, and the Mosaic or fiated pre-Adamite 
fossils. 

We then proceed to demonstrate, on analogical rea- 
soning, respecting admitted creative fiats, that the Mo- 
saic pre-Adamite fossils were in like manner the sub- 



20 TO THE READER. 

jects of fiat laiv, and hence were not preceded by vegetable 
and animal life. Geologists, on the contrary, although 
they admit creative flats to most existences, deny it 
to the fossils ; and hence their faith, based upon the 
assertion that geologic pre-Adamite fossils, which are 
the same in fact as the Mosaic pre-Adamite fossils, were 
preceded by vegetable and animal life, and ivere not the sub- 
jects of fiat law. 

As the result of this, the simple ground of difference 
between the two resolves itself into a faith as to the 
origin of the pre-Adamite fossils, whether they were 
or were not the subjects of fiat law. In other words, 
the biblical Christian faith assumes that they ivere the 
subjects of fiat law, and hence that the rocks and fos- 
sils were made under the law of creative fiats ; while 
the geologic faith denies this position. If the former 
be true, geology falls back among the sciences, and 
must be known only as mineralogy. 

In discussing this subject, it has been our intention 
to treat it in such a manner as to draiv the attention of 
Christians to the importance of the principles involved. If 
at times we use language which any geologist might 
consider personal or implicative in any way, it will 



TO THE READER. 21 

be an assumption on his part, as no personalities are 
either intended or expressed. Upon this subject, we 
have no friends to serve or enemies to conquer. The 
subject alone, irrespective of persons, but necessarily 
not of supporters, is the ground of animadversion. 
The disease to be cured is of a peculiar character, and 
we think, from wrong treatment, has become deep- 
seated, requiring for its eradication energetic means, 
and possibly extraordinary remedies. 

If murmurs or complaints were to go forth from 
any source, it might well be from those who consider 
themselves aggrieved by a trespass upon the sacred 
and time-honored Christian faith, the inalienable prop- 
erty of every true believer. 

The Author. 

■ 

- ■ t 

Nbw Yokk, January, 1860. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The False and True Records 25 

CHAPTER II. 
Geologic Testimony 40 

CHAPTER III. 
Kingdoms in Lines of Existences 55 

CHAPTER IV. 
What the Mosaic Account of Creation is 93 

CHAPTER V. 

Conflict of the Geologic Faith with Science and 
with the Scriptures 119 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Expunging the Mosaic Account of Creation, and 
the Substitution of the Geologic, by Hugh Miller. . 155 



24 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 
Forms in the Fossil Kingdom 168 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Hugh Miller's Discoverable and Revealed 207 

CHAPTER IX. 
Concluding Argument 222 

CHAPTER X. 

Concluding Argument — Science of the Geologic Faith 260 

CHAPTER XI. 

Concluding argument — General Conflicts of the Geo- 
logic and Biblical Christian Faith 287 



ANSWER TO HUGH MILLER. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

Of what moment is it to me whether Geology be true 
or false in her deductions, so long as I believe the truth 
of Scripture ? What matters it to me how long and 
how loudly Geology may call to her adherents, so long 
as I bend my steady course onward in the path of my 
own true faith ? What have I to do with the study of 
Geology, to know her strange and wondrous story of a 
creation, while I believe in Moses and the prophets ? 

From such quiet repose and confidence in the Chris- 
tian world has sprung up, under the garb of science, 
the most powerful, plausible, insinuating, and attractive 
enemy to the Biblical Christian faith which has pre- 
sented itself, as a rival, in the horizon of Christianity 
since its establishment. To deny the fact, shows ei- 
ther a want of understanding as to the points of con- 



26 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

flict between the two, or an erroneous estimate as to 
the extent of the geologic belief. 

Yet the real conflict has scarcely begun. For the 
geologists as a body, either through error or some oth- 
er cause which we need not name, have avowed to the 
world that their doctrines were coincident with Scrip- 
ture, and hence were only to be studied, understood, 
and embraced as a consequence. The result of such 
assertions and certificates, emanating from men of 
standing and worldly reputation — men whose names 
ring through the halls of literature, science, and art — 
has been, the acceptance of these dogmas on their 
personal reputation and standing, rather than upon any 
knowledge that they possess themselves upon the sub- 
ject, and could communicate to others. For it is but 
necessary to ask one question, and the proof of this 
assertion is patent. Will any honest geologist declare 
that he knows that animal or vegetable life did precede 
any one of his pre-Adamite fossils? Will he assert 
that God could not make a fossil, as he made man and 
other things, by fiat law ? Hence there is no proof, 
and the world are simply assuming their belief, not 
facts, when they embrace the succession theory of 
geology. 

This lure, falsely called science, has brought forth 



THE FALSE AND TIL] TRUE RECORDS. 27 

crowds from the fireside, the workshop, the forum, and 
the pulpit, to listen to the seductive, plausible, and 
bewitching stories told only on the assertion of the 
geologist. The Christian, at times startled by the 
apparent conflicts with his faith, was soothed into ac- 
quiescence by the assertion of the geologist that 
"there was no occasion for alarm," as "the Mosaic 

account did not fix the antiquity of our globe" "we 

are exactly on Mosaic and Biblical ground." Expres- 
sions and statements like these have been displayed 
from the ramparts of the geologist during a period of 
nigh half a century. 

During that time they have, under these soothing 
guises, erected a vast pile of fortifications throughout 
the world, supposed by many, who have aided in the 
work, to be the surrounding Scripture with safeguards 
and additional supports. Some have even pointed to 
it from the pulpit, as the growing evidences of Chris- 
tianity, and as being the proud fabric reared upon the 
imperishable foundation of the Christian faith. 

But, alas! the scene has changed. The head and 
front — the general of the geologic, literary, and 
scientific men of the world — Hugh Miller, has un- 
masked the geologic batteries, and by one well-ad- 
justed publication, poured a broadside of deadly mis- 



28 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

siles against the Bible and the Christian faith. We 
have waited patiently in the hope that more moderate 
geologists would disown the deed, but we have waited 
in vain. Nor do we think waiting will bring about a 
denial. His positions may be regarded as the expo- 
nent of the geologic faith in the main conflicts with 
Scripture, respecting the manner and time required in 
making this world; which manner and time are es- 
sential elements in our Biblical Christian faith, and are 
asserted and reasserted, in plain and undeniable lan- 
guage throughout the Scriptures, to be by creative fiats 
as to manner, and six days as to time. While the geolo- 
gist admits the Biblical manner in most things, and 
hence admits the truth of fiat law, he denies it in 
others, so as to make his main conflict as to time utterly 
irreconcilable ivith Bible truth. 

We say his ground is untenable if he admits crea- 
tive fiats at all ; for, to prove the exception, he must 
show that the Creator could not make a fossil by flat 
law ; and if he shows that, he must still show that his 
fossil was pre-Aclamite. We say that, the admission of 
fiat law in any department in Nature, binds him to the 
rule till he can show grounds for an exception. Not 
only will he be inexcusable by the assumption, but he 
must prove the grounds by some well-put and unde- 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 29 

niable proof. Hence we throw heavy responsibility 
on intelligent men, who know this necessity in all 
fairness of argument, and the brethren should not 
deem him worthy the name of a Christian, under such 
circumstances, who doggedly points to his fossil god 
and says, "prove my falsity /" 



Hugh Miller was not alone in his views respecting 
the general bearings which geology has upon Scrip- 
ture. Nor for the purposes of an answer to the point 
of fallacy in the groundwork of geologic faith, is it 
essential to specify wherein his views differ from 
others. These details are of no account, if their main 
postulate be wrong. Nor has Mr. Miller's works or 
arguments ever turned to the source of error; and 
while all is assumed, that assumption in his case, as 
in that of others, becomes broad folly in a logical 
point of view, because he endeavors to demonstrate 
what he can not prove, and has never even enunciated 
his proposition. 

He seemed rather to have been forced by the views 
which his supposed science, and the quasi-scientific 
men (on this point) of his creed advanced, to take 
ground against Scripture rather than find that ground 



30 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

in the Scripture context. This goes to prove what 
few will fail to admit, that by mental education and 
training, Hugh Miller was a devout Christian before 
geology made its deep mark upon him. Nor will we 
go so far as to say that he was not a Christian when 
he was a geologist. But this much we will say, that 
if he practised in his religion upon the views of the 
Christian faith, made coincident with the requirements 
of geology, then he was not a Biblical Christian. 

He has taken the correct view of the conflict, and 
could say no more than elaborate upon the " Two 
Kecords," and "Two Theologies." But so skillfully are 
these subjects handled, that though he lays down the ele- 
ments of each record and each theology as entirely differ- 
ent respecting the parts discussed, and as utterly incon- 
sistent with each other, yet, to suit his purposes, calls 
them in gross the same. His arguments and reason- 
ings are of that inconsistent character in this respect, 
that they can not be reconciled to any other supposi- 
tion, than that he in truth believed, and so intended 
to argue, that the geologist could well understand him 
as reading his creed, while the Biblical Christian would 
believe he was equally handling his, and tying them 
both together with a philological knot, or " cutting 
that knot" at his pleasure, as he says he does in one 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 31 

part of his " Testimony of the Rocks," he is Christian 
or anti-Christian. 

So far as the Scriptural Christian faith is claimed by 
geologists to be coincident with the geologic faith, 
just so far do the two conflict with each other, and 
just so far the Christian faith is false in an important 
element, and hence false as a unit, if the geologic be 
true. Our speciality in this work is to show the con- 
flicts of the two — show wherein the geologic is false 
— and show that, as we have but one true God, so we 
have but one true record — one true theology — and 
but one true Biblical Christain faith as a whole. 

Geology is little less in respect to its theories, than 
a huge Bible with the sedimentary rocks as pages, 
where the geologist, by a rule only followed by him- 
self (because it is not logical), reads and translates 
whatever he sees, or pretends to see, to his congrega- 
tions of listeners ; and, in this respect, bears a strong 
analogy to the co-ordinate branch of religion in the 
Morman faith. There is, we think, a wide difference, 
however, between reading these pages correctly, and 
reading them hypothetically. Facts can be read truly, 
but not fancies ; tangible truths are positive ; un- 
known actions, at times when there were no analogies 
existing, can not be assumed as scientific proofs. 



32 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

The truths of geology, which are the truths of other 
sciences, meet with universal acceptance, and the one 
single assumption which gives geology a distinctive 
name as a science, is scarce ever referred to, and is 
probably entirely unknown to many who receive its 
dogmas, and believe it to be the new-born science of 
the nineteenth century. There is no concealing the 
truth, that from this cause the world has taken a 
geologic stampede, each one vieing with his neighbor 
in his effort to commit to print the innumerable natu- 
ral facts which are to be found on any hillside, and in 
every valley. Each amateur is stimulated to search, in 
the hope of making his name immortal on the geologic 
page. He thus has cracked nodules, hammered lime- 
stones, split coal, and clay slates, till a fossil kingdom 
has been developed, equalling, almost, in graphic out- 
line, the crystaline kingdom in mineralogy. 

This is well, as to the facts developed, and is a noble 
addition to that science which has been taught in our 
universities and other institutions of learning long 
ago, under the name of mineralogy. If the fossil is a 
stone (and if it is not a stone it is not a fossil), then it 
still belongs to mineralogy, as the name indicates. 
The pre-Adamite fossil is generally an aggregation of 
crystals, and crystals of the same description aggre- 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 33 

gate to make the same kind of rock, but in different 
forms. The crystal makes the mountain, makes the 
flagstone, the boulder, the stone of all shapes, and the 
pre- Adamite fossil also. The Creator made the first, 
the intermediate, and the last. He makes them now, 
and the great question to put to the geologist is, could 
he make them as stated by the Mosaic account in six 
days ? 

For, if the fossils in the rocks claimed by geologists 
to be pre-Adamite were made with the previous ex 
istence of animal or vegetable life, then the Mosaic 
account is untrue, and particularly the fourth com- 
mandment, which positively asserts that, the earth and 
all that therein is was made in six days. It will be ob- 
served that the fossils are not excepted. 

The question then results, are all the fossils in the 

rocks and upon the earth the result of the pre-exist- 

ence of vegetable or animal matter to have given 

them form in stone ? The next important question 

respecting the accuracy of the Mosaic statement is, 

were the fossils now found by geologists in the deep 

rocks there at the time Moses wrote the assertion, that 

the earth and all that therein is was made in six days ? 

If this is admitted, then it follows they were either 

made on the third day, when the "Earth" or "Dry 

3 



34 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

Land" was made (which included all the present rock- 
formations mainly in their present shape), or were 
made out of order in the fourth, fifth, or sixth days, in 
a way, and by miraculous means, only known to the 
Creator, and in violation of all known natural laws. 
For if this present organization was made, as stated 
by Moses, in successive days, each day's work being 
necessary for that of the next, and the work as stated 
was done by classes and kingdoms, and each kingdom 
was wholly introduced at the time therein stated, it 
would be a violation of that law of introduction to 
make part of a kingdom on one day and part on the 
next, particularly when an additional miracle would 
have to be performed, as in the placement of fossils in 
the solid rocks after they were once made. 

Many, and probably all, the geologists of note claim 
that this earth has been many millions of years in the 
course of preparation to arrive at the finish which it 
now has, and which finish is dated to be the Mosaic 
account, or the introduction of man upon this planet. 
It matters little to us which geologic theory be the 
nearest correct as to the length of time this earth has 
been forming ; our special object is to show that no 
one of them and the Mosaic account harmonize rela- 
tive to the creation, and, if they do not harmonize, to 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 35 

show why they do not. In a former work were given 
at full length the physical difficulties of the geologic 
formations. They would be condensed and repeated 
in this, if the limits of the work would allow. 

If, then, the geologist proves beyond all doubt his 
assumption that every fossil form found in the deep 
rocks was preceded by an animal or a vegetable, he 
has done much to establish a succession in the rock- 
formations above the granite ; and hence the certain 
proof that the world was not made in six days, as 
stated in the fourth commandment and other portions 
of the Bible. But if, on a closer examination of the 
subject, he shall find that the fossil kingdom is a sep- 
arate and distinct kingdom, and is in its existence 
governed by every law, natural and revealed, which 
governs every other kingdom, and its introduction into 
existence was governed by the same laws which gov- 
erned the introduction of each and all the other kino;- 
doms, then he must conclude, as a necessity, that the 
first forms of this kingdom were of fiat origin — made 
without a parent or pattern, in like manner as were the 
first crystals, the first fishes, the first plants, the first 
vegetables, or the first animals. And although this 
proposition may confound the mind at first, be assured 
that it would be far more difficult to convince any one 



36 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

that the first of mankind were made in completed 
forms, if that individual had not been taught the idea 
in his catechism, or been educated to the thought. The 

mind of man, like that of a child, is unprepared to 

... 

adopt a new idea till he is educated to receive it. 

Let the question be put to such a child or man, who 
has never been informed upon the subject, a Whence 
sprang and how were the first of mankind made ?" and 
his answer would probably be the same as if he were 
asked, " Where did the law of petrifaction or fossiliza- 
tion first manifest itself? or whence sprang the heads 
of the fossil kingdom ?" In either case, without educa- 
tion in the reasons which mankind give and receive 
as grounds for their conclusions, the same answer 
would undoubtedly be given. But if you should 
then tell him that every kingdom known upon earth 
sprang into existence, by the fiat of the Creator, in 
completed forms, and those forms are continued, not in 
identity, but by laws which reproduce them in kind ; 
and you also tell him that this rule is universal except 
as to one kingdom, and that the fossil kingdom ; and 
then if you go one step further with him respecting 
this latter, and tell him that the fossil kingdom is gov- 
erned by all the laws of reproduction which govern 
the others ; that fossils, like plants, can be raised in any 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 37 

quantity, like animals — be made in as perfected forms; 
and that these fossils have separate existences from 
the plants or animals after which they pattern by pet- 
rifaction, and that they are the natural parents of the 
fossil ; and then tell him, in this connection, that the 
first plant was made without a parent, the first animal 
was made without a parent, the first crystal was made 
without a parent; that the first rock of any kind, 
which now daily re-forms, was made without a parent, 
— he would naturally ask, "Why could not the fossil 
be made without a parent also ? Is there any difficulty 
in the way; and is the assertion to the contrary suffi- 
cient ground for abandoning the Bible, which declares 
that 'the earth and all that therein is' was made in 
six days ?" In truth, many, and all those whom we 
answer, admit the making within the Mosaic six days 
of the archetype forms of the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms, but exclude that of portions of the mineral 
kingdom. 

No ground has been shown as yet to induce the be- 
lief that the Creator has made an exception in the fiat 
law. And, in all sound logic, there should first be a 
sufficient reason assigned why such a course was neces- 
sary in order to give color to the proposition, especially 
as there was no more intricacy in making all the ele- 



38 THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 

ments of the mineral kingdom by fiats, the fossil in- 
cluded, than there was in making the vegetable, the 
animal, light, water and air, metals, and their com- 
pounds and crystals. We shall refer to these princi- 
ples hereafter, in their connection with geologic admis- 
sions respecting the establishment and manifestation 
of fiat law. 

A record may be true and it may be false at the 
same time, though not upon the same point. It may 
be true in itself, and the falsest deductions drawn from 
it by a false reading. Thus, with the geologic imprint, 
the apparent signs may indicate the origin of these 
forms to be either by growth or of fiat origin. But 
in the nature of things, these signs may be read either 
way, as the faith of the reader is geologic or Mosaic. 

Now there is a wide difference between positive lan- 
guage in plain terms and inferences drawn from past acts 
in the deep recesses of time. Any careful review of 
the causes which have brought entities, now the sub- 
jects of reproduction, into existence, must be admit- 
ted by every truthful mind as shrouded in mystery. 
It matters little what the character of the entity is, 
or by what strange law it is bound to others. We 
pass all such appearances by, as bald to a proof of 
its advent on earth. The record, then, which comes 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE RECORDS. 39 

from these archetype entities is to be read uniformly 
if read at all. We must read it by one alphabet and 
by one language. Then, may we not assert that the 
geologist reads on a wrong basis, w T hen he claims that 
all lines of existences which now reproduce themselves 
in type were the subjects of fiat law except one, and that 
his pre-Adamite fossil. 



40 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 



CHAPTEE II. 

GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

The testimony which is summoned by geologists in 
support of their view of a creation, is worthy of notice 
in passing. There is, probably, no cloak which has 
covered so many errors in the world as that of u testi- 
mony." A witness is summoned into court, or volun- 
tarily presents himself before the public to give his 
testimony. If he goes into court, he is first sworn " in 
the presence of Almighty God, to tell the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth" The tacit oath 
of the geologist should be the same when he professes 
to give his testimony upon the hidden things which 
he has unfolded, as going to prove the state of the 
earth at any period of time. 

In all ordinary cases of every-day life, a man's testi- 
mony upon any subject is valuable, just in proportion 
to his knowledge and honesty. His honesty is, how- 
ever, of no account, if his information is defective. 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 41 

And if he should endeavor to testify to facts which, in 
the nature of things, he could know nothing about, he 
would risk his reputation as a man worthy of being 
believed. But if he should state, as a positive fact 
that which every hearer would know not to be true, 
he would not only loose his reputation as a man, but 
would loose his liberty also. 

Suppose a case should occur, in which it became 
necessary to collect certain zoological or botanical 
specimens for scientific investigation, and, agreeable to 
instructions, the required collection was finally asserted 
to have been made ; the person intrusted to perform 
the duty was, by some unexpected combination of 
circumstances, called upon to testify to the owner, as 
to what he had collected, and to describe minutely the 
collection. He enters upon the task, describes fluently 
and elaborately all the parts of each animal — the 
nerves, tendons, muscles, flesh, bones, &c, till the ani- 
mal stands panting in life before him, and he almost 
feels the hot breath from his lungs, so faithfully and 
life-like are all the minute points of his intricate frame 
and the motions of his body recounted and animad- 
verted upon. 

The interest and wonder excited in the hearers' 
mind is increased, when the animals daily and hourly 



42 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

habits are rehearsed — how he ate, drank, rested, and 
rose again — what foes he encountered, what battles 
he won over his enemies, or where he retreated for 
safety secure from the voracity of his superiors ; every 
action in life drawn as by an eye-witness, and testified 
to with an earnestness and apparent truthfulness, as 
though it was positive knowledge. 

Every specimen said to be collected was in like 
manner described, and drawings of them delineated, 
showing every part in perfection ; and presenting the 
plant, also, in such flowering nature, that the dewdrop 
was seen resting in its freshness, or waving in the gen- 
tle breeze, and burnished by the noonday sun. 

The list is at last ended, the catalogue completed, 
when the eager possessor, delighted with his supposed 
prizes, is ushered into the presence of the huge animals, 
when to his amazement, what lies before him ! 

Quantities of unshapely stones, and he quickly turns 
upon his collector and demands an explanation. The 
man is amazed at being questioned as to "where 
is your megatherium ? your dinotherium ? your ele- 
phant? your rhinoceros?" and so on. "There they 
are," replies the still more surprised individual, step- 
ping around among the queer-looking rocks, as he 
points out the fragmentary stones which represent 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 43 

each animal. "But do you call these animals?" con- 
tinues the possessor of the collection. "To be sure, 
if they are not the things themselves they are their 
representatives/' replies the collector. "But I want 
the things themselves, sirrah ! I did not ask you for these 
petrifactions, of which no one can tell whether they 
have had the remotest connection with the animals of 
which you speak. It is a gross cheat, a deception, sir. 
I will not have them; take them away." — " My dear 
sir, don't be in such a passion," replies the collector; 
a I thought you a geologist, and if you had been, they 
would have been the same as the animals themselves." 
— " Out with your geology, I want the animals, not a 
cheat." And so the interview ends. 

Now this may seem extravagant with an old geolo- 
gist, whose line of truth he himself adopts, and speaks 
as truth. But to the world, who have themselves to 
form an opinion on this point by evidence, the fore- 
stalling that opinion by calling things by names which 
do not even indicate as much as the kingdom to which 
they belong, is a species of injustice to the uneducated, 
that should not be tolerated in an enlightened com- 
munity. In commerce a man would find close quar- 
ters who would do less morally than this. In truth, 
from the language used by geologists generally, in 



44 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

speaking of their cabinet of animals, one would suppose 
they had a managerie in full breath. 

There is a public wrong either on the one side or 
on the other, when of two sets of existences, the one is 
complete, full of life, and called by the same names 
as another set of existences, having no life, and of 
a totally different composition — no one quality in the 
one corresponding with any quality of the other. 
There is something wrong, we say, either in conclu- 
sion or in inference, in using the one name to de- 
note the other, or vice versa. A stone or mineral, 
it seems rational to believe, can not be an animal, or a 
plant as such, while neither of these, in like manner, 
can be a mineral. What follows as a necessity ? that 
the nomenclature of the one class or the other is 
wrong — that to call a stone an animal, or an ani- 
mal a stone is a deception; whether intentional or 
not on the part of those using the term, is of no con- 
sequence as to the fact. If unintentional, then we 
must have the charity to believe, that those using the 
terms had not fully understood that they were, in this 
way, blending two widely differing kingdoms into one, 
or worse than that — insisting that two kingdoms, 
having no elements in common, are one and the same 
thing. 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 45 

If the manure causes the wheat to grow which 
would not grow otherwise than by its aid, then call 
the wheat manure, and insist that it is such, and you 
nauseate a delicate friend. Go a step further back, 
and tell him that the animal is the same thing as that 
which he produces, and all philological science is lost, 
and names usually given to well-known things are of 
little consequence. 

Now if the geologist could tell what the seed of the 
fossil form is, he could easily show what corresponds 
to the manure that will produce it; or if he could 
describe and make visible the hidden and unknown 
seed which produces any crystalline form, the material 
to compose it can be produced at once from synthetic 
chemistry. 

There is a secret vitality, mysterious and unknown to 
man, in every kingdom in nature, which, when rightly 
deposited with its other parent, wants only the mate- 
rial of which it will form, to cause it to grow to matu- 
rity. This secret principle is one parent, and what- 
ever is produced requires it, before natural action will 
take place, to reproduce the form. For the compo- 
nent parts of man, animal, plant, or crystal, can each 
be combined and placed in a vessel, in the exact pro- 
portion in which they occur in the completed living 



46 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

and acting forms, yet no man, animal, plant, or crystal 
will be made without their secret vitalities. 

There is a secret, beyond the knowledge of man, re- 
quired to make these elements combine and act to- 
gether to produce the whole. And until the geologist 
is able to show that that secret does not as well occur 
in the formation of the fossil-mineral as in the forma- 
tion of the crystal, we must infer that the fossils be- 
long to an independent kingdom in Nature, have parents, 
like natural forms in other kingdoms, and only require 
proper material to develop their variety of forms. By 
parent, as here used, must be understood the vitality 
which causes the matter to aggregate into the form 
expressed by the Divine will in such vitality. Nor 
should the ordinary seed of plants be regarded as 
more than external evidences to man that they en- 
close, and thus make available for use, the secret 
vitality which they contain. From evidences well 
known to every botanist, such vitality must be present 
in the earth, in some varieties of plants at least, with- 
out the external coating of the ordinary seed taken 
from the living plant. 

Hence, the fossil, which is a groiving form and can be 
produced in any numbers, is a separate result, and an 
independent crystalline form from the animal matter, 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 47 

which co-operated with the petrifying vitality and pro- 
duced the fossil form. Nor is the true animal one pa- 
rent of the fossil ; for the animal in life is the true ani- 
mal, while the animal form in the absence of life is one 
parent of the fossil form, and which co-operates with 
the petrifying vitality necessary to produce it. If, 
then, it be denied that the dead animal or plant 
contains the parent, and no secret vitality of the fos- 
sil exists which will produce it, then why does it 
grow ? The answer involves us in the same difficulty 
in which we find ourselves when we deny vitality as 
the primary cause in any of the other kingdoms of 
nature. At least, he who denies it may undertake the 
proof of such denial; for our present purposes the 
rule, and not the exception, will be followed — that all 
growing forms in Nature start in a secret vitality, which at- 
tracts matter congenial to such vitality, for the production of 
forms in the kingdom to which it belongs. 

The reason why this is so, will not be explained 
here \ but if it should be, no more would be arrived at 
than the stated fact, as the nearest approach that can 
be made to first causes from the visible phenomena of 
Nature. To undertake to prove that all forms in Nature 
start in a vitality belonging to each particular kingdom would 
be impossible as a strict scientific proof; but if it be 



48 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

not so, why is a plant starting from a seed, always a 
plant, and not a man, a horse, a crystal, a rhinoceros, 
or a fossil-mineral ? It must be regarded rather in the 
light of a 'natural axiom, than as a proposition requiring 
proof. 

To understand this controlling idea fully, will be one 
step onward in making easy of apprehension the vari- 
ous divisions into kingdoms, which will be made in this 
work, in order to illustrate the origin, growth, and per- 
manency of the mysterious fossil-mineral kingdom, and 
show that the ground on which we object to a nomen- 
clature identical with another kingdom, totally different 
in every particular except in form, is injustice to the 
seeker after truth, and is and has been the forestaller 
of independent opinions upon the subjects thus mis- 
named and misrepresented. 

Thus much for the nomenclature of the science of 
geology, as testimony in its favor for universal accept- 
ance as truth — nomenclature which has arisen, it is 
believed, with those who have pursued a line of truth 
with such impetuosity and speed, that all other collat- 
eral truths have been passed by unheeded, and appa- 
rently, from the honesty and earnestness of its advo- 
cates, unobserved. 

Now let us look at the testimony of geologists, as 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 49 

bearing upon a subject which must in a great measure 
depend for acceptance upon their individual relations. 
They can not be accused of dissimulation, or want of 
honesty or good faith ; but while they have been and 
are pursuing one single and detached line of truth — not 
according to their estimates, but truth in fact, so far as 
the facts which they develop are facts — they neglect 
the infinite other lines of truth which run parallel and 
lie alongside this very line of truth, which, if consid- 
ered in connection with the isolated facts which are 
stated and held up to view, would most essentially 
change the conclusions of those who hear and see but 
the one geologic line in vibration. 

A witness may be summoned into court, and the 
testimony which he gives be every word of it true. 
He may state every fact clearly, distinctly, and 
plainly, going so far into detail, that the transaction 
about which he is testifying makes a landscape, into 
which he dots all the makeweights of a line of truth, 
which he wishes, for some reason best known to him- 
self, to establish. Mayhap the criminal on trial is a 
bad man, and known or suspected to be such by the 
witness, and in his view the ends of justice require 
that he should be convicted. But he goes on with his 

testimony, coloring it, as he proceeds, unintentionally 

4 



50 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

against the criminal — neglects to tell, if you please, 
what he thinks of no consequence to show, his inno- 
cence, because, with a certain bias in his mind, he 
really thinks it of no moment, and he leaves the stand 
honestly believing that a he has told the truth," a the 
whole truth," "and nothing but the truth," and has 
thus convicted the criminal ; -while, if he had narrated 
that which he considered of no moment, as a point of 
laiv, it would have acquitted him. 

A more dangerous witness than this, still, is one 
who, not knowing the whole truth, thinks he knows it, 
and testifies stoutly and confidently to what he does 
know. What he knows, if only part of a transaction, 
may be contradicted flatly by what he does not know, 
and from such testimony comes only error, false con- 
clusions, and fatal results, doing violence to everything 
like justice. 

A more dangerous witness still than either, is he 
who testifies to conclusions drawn from facts partially 
seen by himself, when to draw those conclusions, he is 
forced to exercise his fancy in restoring those portions 
of the facts which he has not seen, either to acquit or 
condemn the criminal. It requires but little knowl- 
edge of human nature to know what would be the fate 
of the poor fellow, if he be the enemy, or the lucky one 



GEOLOGIC TESTLMONY. 51 

if he be the friend of the witness. And such is poor 
human nature, not the intent or fault of the witness. 

Then, too, a witness may have a cast of mind on 
which certain parts of a transaction may make a 
stronger impression than a certain other class of facts, 
and when he is called upon to give testimony, he will 
remember the one set easier than he does the other, 
and his relation will bend to that side with which he 
is most intimately connected, or most remotely inter- 
ested. He may be, as in the case cited before, honest 
in intention, but fail of illustrating the a whole truth," 
from the habit of remembering one set of ideas, and 
exercising the mind with them, to the ultimate exclu- 
sion of others equally important but neglected. 

These unfortunate results are aggravated in each 
instance related, if the witness has naturally an imagi- 
native mind, and it becomes strongly wrought upon 
by a favorite theory, or fired with apparent truths, 
culled from a line of truth equally apparent. Then 
everything is seen over the shoulder of this fancy, 
and those points which are makeweights of the right 
stripe, are noticed, handled, magnified, and described, 
while all other things, highly important to seekers 
after truth, are passed by unnoticed, as though they 
did not exist. And such may, and unquestionably 



52 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

has become the habit of mind in many writers, relative 
to the illustration of geology, that an honest purpose 
may believe it is speaking the " truth," and the " whole 
truth," when it is only relating that which squares with 
a theory, or a given line of truth. 

That geologic writers speak the truth, is, we pre- 
sume, true ; but that they tell the u whole truth," or 
relate all which bears upon the just and intelligent un- 
derstanding of the merits of their theories, is what they 
would not themselves assert to be the fact. Nor could 
more be expected. They are advocating for their 
own ends a certain hypothesis or theory of a creation, 
and they drop themselves modestly into their "rut" 
of truth, and leave the advocates of another hypothesis 
to oust them from their security, and establish an ad- 
verse mode of creation. 

Their " rut of truth" may lead to the primitive crea- 
tion, but it is quite doubtful whether, by travelling 
therein so carefully, their occupants will be able to 
dispense much light upon other collateral and more 
important lines of existences. 

It is doubtful, too, whether the disciples of this 
theory, made so by pleasant fancy sketches, drawn in 
an agreeable way, have ever cast their minds back 
to the " beginning" of that " rut," to see who travelled 



GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 53 

there when these truths began. Who made the first 
mark, and how it was made in this long line of accu- 
mulated travel. And if it be admitted that it had a 
beginning, when and where did that beginning begin ? 
Were there many beginnings, or was there but one 
beginning, and did that one beginning have many 
beginnings within it ? 

These are questions to which the testimony of geol- 
ogists have made the fossil mineral, at various times, 
give various answers. We purpose to call upon this 
mysterious stranger, and by putting questions in a 
different form, make his answers take quite another 
shape, and prove from the evidence which he himself 
shall give, that he is not an exception in truth to any 
other thing which has had a beginning, that he is not 
the miserable outcast of Almighty rule which the 
geologist would fain make him ; but that he is entitled 
to the same rank, the same care, the same importance 
in the world as anything else, and like them, could 
have been the subject of miracle in first form. 

And if we fail not in the attempt, we will show that 
the fossil mineral, as it came from the hand of God, 
without a parent, and without a seed, testifies in its 
very existence the purity of its origin. So also the 
first of the race of man, of the entire vegetable and ani- 



54 GEOLOGIC TESTIMONY. 

mal kingdom, should be allowed by all Christian cosr 
mogonists, to have been made by creative fiats, which 
called perfect forms into existence without a previous 
earthly form in type. The geologist would fain pros- 
titute the handwriting of the Creator, and make the 
fossil existence "life out of death." He denies, then, 
even to the fossil mineral, what is granted to its ele- 
ments, the original touch to give them form — the 
moulding hand of the Creator. 

It is sound philosophy to assume, that in the making 
of the first forms, there were no special favorites, ex- 
cept the necessity to accomplish all in due time and 
in a given order, and if it was possible for the Creator 
to make one form without its parent or seed, it was 
possible for him to make another, and if he made all 
such save one, we must have decided and unequivocal 
proof that he made that an exception to the rule, 
before we can simply assume it as the groundwork of 
a demoralizing and unsound faith. 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 55 



CHAPTER III. 

KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

For the purposes of our illustration, we name all 
distinct classes of things, be they small or great, kingdoms ; 
and the separate members, which are reproduced, or 
which reproduce each other consecutively, making up 
these kingdoms, lines of existences. Thus the vegetable 
kingdom is made up of certain lines of existences 
which reproduce themselves ; while if any one of these 
lines can be petrified, or fossilized, showing that it can 
be reproduced in a fossil state as often as the vegeta- 
ble can be grown, we call those fossils a line of existence 
in the fossil kingdom. 

It will be seen, then, that each line of existence has 
its parent on the one side, and its vitality, the parent, 
on the other, which, placed under favorable circum- 
stances, will produce the required result — a step in 
the line. It matters not, either, whether a form in 
nature be reproduced by the action of natural law 



56 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

or not, there is a something corresponding with this 
vitality which is lost under certain changes, and would 
indicate that all forms are accompanied, during their intact 
condition, by their vitality, so that it becomes an active 
principle from the birth to the dissolution of the form. 

This vitality is divisible in some forms, and indivisible 
in others, and it is believed, though we do not assert it 
as a settled principle, that every line of existence has 
a different vitality, because they produce different results, 
are made active by different means, and are extin- 
guished by different causes. By being extinguished is 
meant, changing their character as perfected wholes in 
their completed results, so as no longer to retain their 
distinctive characters. 

Some minerals are changed from their perfect state 
by the application of heat, cold, water, and sometimes 
the atmosphere alone. There are various agents that 
will destroy the mineral crystal, as also the aggrega- 
tion of them. In the case of carbonate of lime when 
heated, the carbonic acid, one element of its perfect 
formation, escapes, its vitality as a crystal of carbonate 
of lime is lost, and a residuum is left possessing an- 
other vitality, but not that of the crystal before death. 

The reader must excuse this rather dry lecture 
(possibly as interesting as the other portions), since it 



KINGDOMS IN LINKS OF EXISTENCES. 57 

is introduced to show, that the law which governs the 
fossil mineral in its introduction, grozcth, and decay (if it be 
subjected to decaying processes), follows in every respect 
that of any other crystalline or aggregated mineral mass. 

And here, let it be remembered, the academic divis- 
ions and names given to formations on the earth, have 
nothing to do with them as things bearing separate 
existences, and forming after a given pattern, so that 
the eye can distinguish to what line in the kingdom it 
belongs. As far, then, as our purposes are concerned, 
we call all mineral, except the vegetables, animals, 
water, gases, light, and other subtiles. 

This classification is not that given by mineralogists, 
for they describe a mineral to be " any substance in 
nature not organized by vitality, and having a homo- 
geneous structure."* 

Now we do not wish to gainsay this definition, but 
as high authority, and as a generally-received classifi- 
cation, we would be doing injustice to our main postu- 
late, not to examine it, and see on what grounds it is 
based. What makes the spar, the gem, or the mineral 
ore aggregate sooner than a like principle secreting 
the fossil? or aggregating the conglomerate into a 
rock substance ? Dry sand will not make a conglom- 

* Dana. 



58 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

erate without the hardening principle — its vitality — 
can be induced to operate. 

We frequently loose sight of generalizations in 
specialities, and we can not see why vitality, as a 
principle, can not be allowed to every completed 
existence, when that intact principle can be desfo^ed 
by any extraneous cause. It is the great principle 
which elucidates the fossil, and hence, we anticipate, 
will meet with disfavor in certain quarters. Though 
if it be not a principle equally applicable to all things, 
we are unable to compass the reason with the light 
which we now possess. 

If it be contended, that all vitality in the three 
kingdoms, usually assumed as the three great divisions 
in Nature (the mineral, vegetable, and animal), were 
the same in each, this supposition could be overthrown, 
because it could be demonstrated by experiment, that 
what would destroy vitality in one line of existence 
would not destroy it in another, and hence, the same 
vitality did not control the existence of the two. 

By referring to the various lines in the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, as compared with each other, it 
is a well-known fact, that causes which will extinguish 
the vital action in one, will not affect it in another 
of the same kingdom. Like causes acting on like 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 59 

aggregated compounds, should produce like results; 
and as the chemical compounds may be assumed to be 
near the same in any two analogous lines in the vege- 
table or animal kingdoms, it follows, that if the results 
are not alike in dissolution, it must be attributable to 
the only remaining active element, vitality. 

Thus we progress in gaining a generalizing view 
of the uniformity in the manner of constructing enti- 
ties in archetypes, and in accordance with analogical 
fiat law, the mind naturally reverts to those forms in na- 
ture, which, by education, we have been taught, started 
as subjects of this law, and were brought forth com- 
plete from the hand of the Creator. As a ground of 
sound reasoning upon fiat law, is there a distinction 
between one line of existence in nature and another, 
and is there a sound reason why the one should not 
be bound by the same rule as the other ; or why one 
kingdom should be the exception to that law, while its 
neighbor, which accompanies it, and on which it de- 
pends for birth and existence, is the admitted sub- 
ject of the law ? 

But we hear the geologist say, a do we not see the 
fossil now grow from the wreck of animal and vege- 
table forms, in fragmentary masses, as well as those 
which are entire ?" We say on this point, so far as 



60 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

principle goes, a part of a rock can be the subject of 
fiat law as well as a mountain range, for both are 
completed entities, and have their special vitalities. 
It would be, however, unsound to say that fragment- 
ary members of a completed, living entity, existing 
under a vitality in nature as a separate line, were 
alike the subjects of fiat law, except they be in place 
as portions to compose the completed archetype. 
And whether you assume the fragmentary fossil as an 
element of the entire mineral kingdom, or as a sepa- 
rate line, and an archetype form, it matters not, as 
affecting its title of reproduction under the almost 
universally-admitted creative fiat law. 

When the mind can fully understand what an inde- 
pendent line of existence is, there will be no difficulty 
in separating the life of the fossil from the life of the 
animal and plant, which are mere elements in nature, 
which operate to prepare the parent of the fossil on 
the one side. 

On the same ground of reasoning, and with equal 
truth, might the geologist argue a succession in ani- 
mals 9 forms (which he denies), because from the very 
same debris which makes the fossil in the mineral 
kingdom spring, under other circumstances (being 
other parents), revolting animal forms. Now, it is as 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 61 

difficult for us to account for the springing into life of 
this class of things, or any one of them, as it is to ex- 
plain why, under other circumstances, the fossil springs 
from the same matter. 

The geologists admit the class of animals evolved 
from animal matter when vitality has departed, as be- 
ing subjects of fiat law ; while they deny the mineral 
form which comes from the same matter under differ- 
ent circumstances as bound to the law of succession. 

We think this illustration is sound and a good anal- 
ogy ; and if it should be unsatisfactory to some, they 
can draw many from other sources. And, as a result- 
ing consequence, we must assert our conviction to be, 
that the fossil, either fragmentary or complete, is a 
principle in nature, having as much individuality in it- 
self, and entitled to all the privileges, subject to all 
the contingencies, and bound to take rank with the 
remainder of God's works, made objects of reverence 
by the Christian in the belief of their creative flat 
origin. 

It has been somewhat a matter of wonder with us 
why geologists have not endeavored to show, by some 
plausible argument, the origin of light, air, water, vege- 
tables or animals, by some process of the creative en- 
ergy other than that of fiat law — nay, even more than 



62 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

this, the numerous primordial elements of matter, and 
the metallic masses and ores in the secret places of the 
earth. To a candid mind, two prominent reasons sug- 
gest themselves : — 

First — That there is no hypothesis which can cover 
the mystery, except they refer them to fiat origin ; 
and — 

Second — If they are handled at all, they fall as 
of necessity into this rut, and become dead-weights 
against their faith. 

The variety of fossils found, their sequence in or- 
der of arrangment (if that be true as stated by geol- 
ogists), are of that class of mysteries only known to 
the Creator. Why he has seen fit to make a variety 
of rocks, or of animals, or of plants, or of heavenly 
bodies, are questions which any man can ask, but no 
man can answer. And he who thinks and asserts that 
there are no mysteries concealed from human research 
is not a believer in the Christian faith ; for that prin- 
ciple is asserted and reasserted throughout the Bible. 

We have yet to learn the difference between an 
archetype form representing the head of a line of 
existence, and a reproduction after the pattern in kind. 
Who moulded the first, and who the last ? Is the first 
less perfect than the last ? and, if so, on what ground 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 63 

is the supposition based? In either of the two 
which we have named, is the naturally reproduced air 
or water different from that which was liquefied into 
existence by the Almighty fiat ? Would it, then, be 
sound reasoning for those who admit the Creator's abil- 
ity, in this enlightened age of equilibriated science and 
divine revelation, or the fact of the introduction in Na- 
ture of any completed organisms to assert, that because 
air and water now form from existing elements, that 
hence all air and water upon this planet has formed in 
like manner ? that no air or ivater was formed at first by 
the fiat of the Creator, because we now know of their 
forming from pre-existing elements, and by virtue of 
those affinities which he has implanted in them, and 
which he yet maintains. 

Admitting, then, the introduction of air and water 
by a creative fiat, and also by reproductive ability, 
how are we to determine the archetype particles from 
the reproduced ones ? This the geologist must admit 
is a puzzling question and defies his skill. He, as well 
as those who disagree with him on other points, will 
undoubtedly coincide on the following — that abstractly 
or positively there is no means of determining the 
question. 

Now, suppose we classify every particle of air in 



64 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

every portion of the earth, and call it the air kingdom ; 
and all the water in like manner, and call it the ivater 
kingdom — all the quartz-crystals in the world, and call 
that the quartz-crystal kingdom ; and all the fossils in the 
earth, and call that the fossil kingdom. We then ask 
the chemist, the mineralogist, and the geologist, to 
come forward and point out, in his respective depart- 
ment, which of each kingdom was a first, and which a 
reproduced formation ; or tell, from the inspection of 
the things themselves in that condition, whether there were 
among the whole mass of each an archetype particle 
of water, of air — a quartz-crystal, or a mineral fossil. 

The chemist commences his discourse, and says, 
" How can you expect me to point out the difference 
between one particle of water and another — one 
made yesterday, or to-day, or thousands of years ago ? 
they are all alike — there is no way of telling ; the 
question borders on absurdity. There are what we 
term impurities in water, by which I can tell whether 
it be salt water or fresh — whether it be the water of 
the Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, the Black sea, or 
the Dead sea, or any other distinctive known body 
of water — whether it be rain-water, spring-water, or 
river-water (which is rain-water after it has taken up 
more impurities) ; but I can not tell one particle of 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 65 

pure water from another, or where or at what time it 
was made. Though my experience teaches that water 
is constantly decomposed and re-formed, and the strong 
probabilities are, that among these particles which are 
here collected, there is a large proportion which were 
combined in the primitive creation. But if you ask 
my scientific opinion as to ivhen they were made, and 
which was made first, and which last, I must answer, 
that, without positive knowledge as to the fact, I can 
give no opinion based on exact science. If I see the 
water condensed from the two gases which compose it, 
my knowledge is perfect, and my answer would be sci- 
entific ; but if I have the particle presented to me 
independently of that knowledge, I am at a loss to 
tell more than that all analogical reasoning induces 
me to believe that some particles of water that I see 
have been made by the fiat of the Creator, while 
others have been reproduced/' 

" Suppose, Mr. Chemist, you should find a drop of 
water in a quartz-crystal, enclosed in the granite rock 
at a very considerable depth in its solidity, when 
would you say that that water w r as formed ? Would 
you not be able to say positively that that drop of ivate? 
was made in the primitive creation ?" 

Chemist. — "No, I could not; for all rocks and crys- 

5 



66 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

tals are more or less porous, and such a phenomenon, 
if found, might by possibility be produced by conden- 
sation of gases or of aqueous vapor : but the probabil- 
ities would be decidedly in favor of the supposition 
that it was from the 'primitive fountain, and my reasons 
for that conclusion are that the granite rock must 
have been among the first solid things moulded on 
this planet ; and, admitting that to be so, there were 
no natural causes that could decompose pure water — 
all these causes are in the order of creation, of subse- 
quent date to the making of the granites by any 
hypothesis of a creation as yet advanced and advo- 
cated. Nor could there have been hydrogen and 
oxygen evolved from any known form in nature to 
have made the reproduced water, until after the gran- 
ite was made ; and hence I should infer, conclusively, 
that the water found in quartz-crystal was made in 
place ; that it was so made simultaneously with the 
crystal, or made before, and, if made before, was a 
first form or archetype. I can conceive of no way by 
which it can be determined, in the air or water king- 
doms you have supposed, which particles of each are 
primitive, and which are reproductions. But if these 
particles were impeiishable bodies, then one fact at least 
could be determined positively — that some of them 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 67 

were fiat forms ; and if } T ou admit the interference of a 
Creator at all in their making, some of them are fiat 
forms, while others are reproduced ones." 

Geologist (interrupting). — "Then I suppose yon say 
that all lines of existences, even those in our fossil 
kingdom, were made as we find them in the rocks, and 
without the previous existence of the plant or animal 
which they so faithfully represent." 

Chem. — " No, I have not said so, Mr. Geologist, what- 
ever I may think on the subject; but. the form of your 
question awakens a new thought in my mind : and 
now allow me, as you have taken up your subject a 
little out of its order, to ask for my own information a 
few questions. 

66 Can you tell me which of the fossil forms we have 
here collected were made first, and which last ?" 

Geol. — " That is hardly a fair question, when these 
fossils are jumbled together in this way ; but let me 
separate them, and then I can tell you." 

Chem. — " Never mind ; take the simplest and most 
common — any of the fossil zoophytes which run 
throughout the geologic range from the first to the 
last geologic formation." 

Geol. — " We class the rocks according to the fossils 
which they contain, and judge of the age of the fossil 



68 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

by the position of the rocks in the earth ; and as the 
fossil you have selected is found in all of them, I scarce 
know how to answer your question." 

Ohem. " What I mean to be understood by this ques- 
tion is, can you tell the geologic age of the animal by 
the fossil which represents it ?" 

Geol. " Oh yes, I can tell the geologic age of every 
fossil before me with perfect ease, excepting those 
which are common to all the rock formations, being 
some lower orders of zoophytes." 

Ohem. " What may I understand by geologic age ?" 

Geol. " The term is rather an indefinite one, but all 
the limit which can be given to it positively is, that one 
geologic age precedes another." 

"How do you determine this fact?" inquires the 
chemist. 

"Easily," replies the geologist, "by the rocks of 
different kinds which lie one upon another, and which 
have been upheaved by some convulsion of nature, 
and show the layers of sedimentary rock, the one 
over the other." 

" What do you mean by layers of rock ?" says the 
chemist. 

Geol. " You seem to be truly ignorant of our science, 
Mr. Chemist, and from the questions you ask, I shall 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 69 

have to commence your education in this subject at 
the beginning." 

Chem. " This is the point I am aiming at ; that which 
follows the 'beginning' I may be as able to judge as 
you; but what I wish to ascertain is, what evidence 
you possess in the geologic science respecting a ' be- 
ginning/ and which corresponds, in accuracy of reason- 
ing, to that which I have just given respecting air and 
water." 

Geol "I will commence by telling you, that this 
earth was once a ball of fire, or molten matter, which 
cooled, and the outward crust thus made wrinkled up 
into our mountains, w T hich have been washed by the 
oceans of waters which you have told us of, and by 
this friction, and, as you know, chemical action, the 
detached portions of them have formed a sediment 
which has hardened into rock of another sort, and so 
on and so on, till, from the gneiss which you see com- 
posing most mountain ranges, and which was the first 
sedimental rock thus formed, w r e run up through the 
mica and talc schists, the clay slates, the grauwacke 
group of rocks, the silurian limestones, the old red 
sandstone, the mountain and magnesian limestones, 
with coal-beds intervening, the new red sandstone, 
shell, lias, oolite, and chalk limestones, marls, and, 



70 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

finally, clay, soil, &c. .In these various rock forma- 
tions, commencing with the clay slates upward to the 
soil, and in it, are found fossils, which go to show, that 
the animals and plants which they represent flourished 
upon the earth before these fossils were made ; and 
their being entombed in these rocks, is evidence that 
the rocks themselves have been made by successive 
additions by water actions, in the course of which 
these living forms have been engulphed, and the fossil 
forms found as the consequence. We are supported 
in this belief, since all those rocks which contain fossils 
are being developed now upon the earth, with fos- 
sil forms in them, but of a flora and fauna peculiar to 
this age, while those of the various and previous rock 
formations referred to, differ somewhat from these. 

Chem. a What are the differences to which you 
refer ?" 

Geol " To give you the idea of diversity and variety 
in fossils found, it will be necessary to tell you in what 
kind of rocks they occur. To do this, it becomes 
necessary, also, to tell you that no two great divisions 
of rock are alike ; but geologists have made no other 
classification of rocks than that which is dependant 
upon the fossils found in them, and the consequent 
relative position of one above the other." 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 71 

Chem. " Then, if I understand you, when you find a 
rock in one geologic age, which is identical with that 
formed in another, you refer the making of each to 
differing epochs of time ?" 

Geol. " Certainly, for the fossils contained in rocks 
accompanying each, show, that as the fossils differ in 
the two sets of rocks, so they must have been made 
at different times, and the one being over the other 
proves this fact conclusively." 

Chem. " How would it be if the fossils were made by 
a creative fiat ? Would the fact of one rock overlying 
another be conclusive proof that the under one was 
made first, and the upper one last V 

Geol. " I think it would be conclusive proof that the 
under one was made first : but how long first, of course, 
could not be determined without referring to the fos- 
sils, and if the fossils be admitted as made by a crea- 
tive fiat, then the rocks must also be admitted as made 
in like manner, but that is absurd ." 

Chem. u Why absurd ?" 

Geol. "Because we see these same rocks, at least 
most of them, forming daily under our eyes, and see 
animals and plants being fossilized and buried in these 
accumulating rocks, and we can tell from inspection, 
how long it takes a few inches of rock to form, and 



72 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

hence, we say, that those rocks in the earth which 
correspond with these in composition, must have re- 
quired a proportionate length of time to form in." 

Chem, " What rocks do you now refer to as forming 
daily ?" 

Geol u The limestones, sandstones, and slates. The 
primary rocks, as they are denominated, do not now 
re-form, these are the granites and the crystalline lime- 
stone or marbles, and a few others, which, from the 
appearances of heat visible in the construction, are 
called metamorphic rocks." 

Chem. " How many species of minerals can you make 
on the ground of different crystalline composition?" 

Geol "If you arrange them upon that footing, I 
presume you must take the mineralogical division, and 
Dana claims there are five hundred different species in 
the mineral kingdom, and these, with their varieties, 
are contained within the rock formations of the earth." 

Chem. " Then what do you denominate a species of 
mineral in a geological sense ?" 

Geol "We do not pay much attention to species; 
but I suppose we should make the same division as 
the mineralogists do, and, if you please, naturalists 
too, in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The 
peculiarities of the internal and external structure 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 73 

would govern a species, and it may not be uninstruc- 
tive to you, to quote Dana upon this point. He says : 
< the true foundation of a species in mineralogy, must 
be derived from crystalization, as the crystalizing force 
is fundamental in its nature and origin, and it is now 
generally admitted, that identity of crystalline form and 
structure is evidence of identity of species. This prin- 
ciple unites certain distinct chemical compounds into 
the same species, for example : a silicate of magnesia, 
and a silicate of iron crystallizing alike, constitute but 
one species in mineralogy, though chemically so dif- 
ferent." 

Chem. Ci Can you tell me to what geologic age these 
five hundred species of minerals belong, or to which is 
each referred as to its introduction upon this earth ?" 

Geol " I do not understand you. Do you mean to 
ask when the first carbonate of lime, for example, was 
made and introduced ?" 

Chem. "Not particularly that, but the entire range of 
species, for they are found, as a general thing, indis- 
criminately scattered throughout the rock formations." 

Geol. " Well, you know our theory is, that all things 
were once a fused mass — and this earth's substance 
was a ball of fluid melted matter, which commenced 
to cool, and the surface did cool and formed a solid 



74 KINGDOMS IX LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

foundation, which was granite rock, and then waters 
were placed upon this granite, and the wearing pro- 
cesses of the water made a sediment, which settled at 
the bottoms of these waters, and hardened, in the 
course of time, into other rock, and so on and so on, 
till all the rocks of the earth, which are called sedi- 
mentary, were made. This, we judge, was so, from 
the fact that we find, as I have said before, fossils in 
these rock, which must be the representations of pre- 
vious living forms of plants and auimals." 

Chem. u There is a difficulty in your first supposition, 
which, as a chemist, I should pronounce fatal. If this 
earth, and its present component parts, was supposed 
to be in an igneous state of fluidity at first, how is it 
that we find now, that all substances have a different 
point of fusibility, and that granite rock has the highest 
•of all. So that, if the granite was in fusion, every other 
known substance ivas utterly destroyed — and when it 
cooled, these substances, being in a gaseous state, could 
not return, nor any one of them, into the solid mass 
of the granite rock. And as we do find many of 
them there, can we account for their being there by 
any such supposition ?" 

Geol. "I confess to you, that there are difficulties 
like these w 7 hich have caused very many of us to aban- 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 75 

don the fusion theory, and the metals are the most 
stubborn things to get on with on this hypothesis. I 
know that they are mostly found in the solidity of the 
granite rock, and, too, that they are all destroyed at a 
temperature that will melt it. But I do not see how 
the science can be maintained, if it be not done on 
this as a start ; for if it be admitted that the granite 
rock was made by the fiat of the Creator ', then all things 
which are contained ivithin its solidity must be abandoned to the 
same rider 

Chem, " Is there any reasonable conjecture by which 
the granite rocks have been formed like the sedi- 
mentary rocks, by a long progressive course of evolv- 
ing, or development V 

Geol "I am not aware of any, having the shadow 
of support, which does not trace its validity, either to 
an igneous fluidity in mass and cooling, or to a creative 
fiat" 

Chem. " Do you acknowledge, in your theories, that 
the Creator made the granite rocks as they now 
exist V 

Geol "Most certainly we do, and more than that, 
we think that He was able to make them in either* 
way, whichever was agreeable to him." 

Chem. " What grounds have you, then, for judging 



76 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

that the primitive granites, and metamorphic rocks, 
are of igneous origin ?" 

Geol "From appearances which plainly show that 
they have once been in fusion." 

Chem. "Are you enabled to say distinctly, how the 
first granites, or what you denominate metamorphic rocks, 
looked when they came from the hand of the Creator, 
by whichever process they were made, by fusion, or by 
a fiat?" 

Geol " We do not admit them to be made by a fiat, 
because their appearance shows they have had an 
igneous origin." 

Chem. " But suppose that it pleased the Creator to 
make them by a fiat, and yet make them having the 
appearance of an igneous origin ?" 

Geol " This is absurd, because it is a deception to 
man, and why should the Creator deceive ?" 

Chem. "It might be called a deception by some, but 
it would not be so called by me, for I know that these 
appearances are such as occur in after-states by the appli- 
cation of heat, and, therefore, there is a good reason 
why, if the Creator did not intend to deceive, they 
•were made as they are. For if they were not so 
made in archetypes, the application of heat to them 
would bring about entirely new appearances, and the 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 77 

results obtained would not be recognised as being the 
same things." 

Geol. u This is just what I say, that if fire now will 
produce these appearances, fire must have been used in 
their first making. There we agree precisely, and 
these are the foundation principles of our geologic 
science. To express it in a more general form, we say, 
that whatever we see now produced as a completed result, the 
same mode of action was at first, always has, and always will 
be, used to bring about like results." 

Chem. " We do agree, to a certain extent, but not in 
the length and breadth of your proposition. I will 
modify your generalization this much — '. whatever we 
now see produced as a completed result, the same 
mode of action always has, and always will be, used to 
bring about like results ;' leaving out the words 6 ivas 
at first] and insignificant as these last three words are, I 
regard them as the stumbling block of your science." 

Geol. "Is it not good reasoning, and sound logical 
philosophy, to assert, that what we now see accom- 
plished in nature has always been so done ?" 

Chem. a This may do as a plausible, broad proposi- 
tion to present to the mind of a multitude, but will 
scarce answer as between us ; though, I suppose, you 
mean to state substantially, what you have just stated 



78 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

relative to like results following each other from like 
causes in nature." 

Geol. a I mean to be close, though I may be a little 
popular. You have stated my meaning." 

Chem. "Then, if this be your intention, and you 
admit the proposition, that like results in nature 
always flow from like causes, when do you begin with 
your lines of existences, as I may call them, where 
any one of these results is one step in the chain?" 

Geol. "At the beginning, of course, the first result 
of the kind arrived at, or brought into existence." 

Chem. "Now let me ask you to generalize, once 
more, what are the causes which conspire to produce 
such results in nature ?" 

Geol. " They are as numerous as the various results 
produced ; and there may be said to be one set of causes 
to produce the numerous steps in any one line of exist- 
ence ; that is, the same causes always produce the 
same kind of pine, wherever it may grow. Another 
set of causes produces the same kind of oak, wherever 
it is grown. Another set of causes produces a given 
kind of cereal. Another set of causes produces a fos- 
sil fern leaf. Another set of causes produces a fossil 
fish of a given kind. Another set of causes produces 
one of the varieties of quartz-crystals, and so on, every 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 79 

given form in nature following some previous one of a 
like kind, each being a type in the line of existence to 
which they belong, as the letters a, b, c, or d, are each 
types of a repeated alphabet in metal — repeated, pos- 
sibly, one thousand or many thousand times in a font 
of type." 

Chem. "The same causes producing like results, to 
what cause do you attribute the first result of each 
particular kind of thing ?" 

Geol. " As for the answer to this question, we have 
no means of proving it by science, and, in truth, it 
must be simply a matter of faith, for who can tell 
what causes made the first thing of its kind? Al- 
though we well know, by experience and scientific 
inductive reasoning, that like causes now produce like 
results, yet what was the first cause no one can, of 
course, tell, though they may conjecture." 

Chem. " Then, at best, it would not be true science, 
which would pretend to tell with accuracy what the 
first cause was which produced the first of the kind of 
any given result ?" 

Geol " Most certainly not ; the first cause must for 
ever be enveloped in profound mystery, though our 
faith leads us to attribute all first causes to a Creator." 

Chem. "Do you think this rule applies to every form 



80 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

in nature, or, rather, to every line of existence in every 
kingdom ?" 

Geol "I do not know any exception to the rule, in 
truth, I can not well see how there can be an excep- 
tion." 

Chem. "How do you, then, apply that rule to the 
fossil kingdom, which is the manifestation of the basis 
of all your conclusions respecting the formation of this 
earth T 

Geol "There is no difficulty in that. The cause 
which produces the fossil now has ever produced it." 

Chem. " Is that so ? Let us, then, see the cause which 
produces a fossil form, for example, to-day. Is it not 
the pre-existence in life of the form itself, and a local- 
ity suited for fossilization, which produces the result 
now ?" 

Geol " Most assuredly." 

Chem. "Is the fossil form thus completed an inde- 
pendent, distinct form in nature, of different qualities 
and constitution from the living form ?" 
Geol. " It is so, no doubt." 

Chem. " Then, if you were to make a thousand of 
them, and lay them down upon the earth in the order 
of time in which they were made, would not each one 
be a 6 type' in that especial line of existence, as sub- 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 81 

stantially as though they were living plants or animals ? 
for you can make the fossils as fast as you can raise 
the plants or breed the animals." 

Geol. " We do not find such things in nature, as fos- 
sils made by men in the manner referred to." 

Chem. " No, I presume not, but you will not deny 
the thing to be possible V 

Geol. "It is possible, provided the exact causes to 
make the same fossil were present each time." 

Chem. "Then suppose we select some particular 
plant or animal, which we know and admit is repro- 
duced in type successively, and each time that it was 
so reproduced, it was fossilized on its death. Would 
we not have two lines of existences, the one the living 
and the other the product of the once living, and other 
causes — the fossil lines. A strong analogy on this 
point is the tree and the fruit, two independent (when 
produced) lines, the one growing out of the other ; yet 
who can doubt the Bible to be true, as to the expressed 
creative fiat causing the tree and seed within itself to 
spring into existence together ? And if w T e admit any 
other mode, we pass from fiat law to that of develop- 
ment. The one line, the living existence, we know, 
or at least admit, as our faith, did start in a completed 
form, and without a parent. Now can you tell me 

6 



02 kingdoms in lines of existences. 

on what ground you admit the one line to start with- 
out a parent, and admit a parent to the fossil line? 
In other words, you say the fossils, in all cases, were 
preceded by vegetable or animal life, while the first 
of each animal or vegetable was an archetype, a com- 
pleted form without a parent." 

Geol. "I must, in all candor, say, that there is no 
proof on that point, and the one is as reasonable, 
abstractly, as the other. In principle I can, in truth, 
see no difference ; but we readily admit the first, as a 
matter of faith instilled by education. The second, on 
the other hand, we regard, and, possibly, also by edu- 
cation, as a secondary form. But while you may 
induce many to believe the first, there are very few 
who will believe that the fossil was made without the 
pre-existence of the forms which they represent." 

Ohem. " If the fossil were admitted to the same rule 
of archetype forms which you have laid down ; that is, 
6 the first cause must for ever he enveloped in 'profound mys- 
tery! how would this effect the science of geology as 
it is now understood ?" 

Geol. "If that be admitted, the whole science falls 
at once ; there would not be a time-mark left, if the 
pre- Adamite fossils in the rocks were made by a fiat ; 
or if they are placed upon the same footing with other 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 83 

lines of existences, which our faith allows us to 
consider were introduced in place by a creative fiat. 
In truth, you never can make people believe such a 
doctrine." 

Chern. "It is as easy to believe that as any other 
application of fiat law, only educate the public mind 
that way ; but it takes time. They can readily see and 
apprehend a simple, physical fact, such as a fossil being 
made from an animal, and hence, that the animal pre- 
ceded the fossil ; but it is not so easy for that mind to 
penetrate to the foundations of our faith, and be able 
at once to understand the abstractions of chemical 
science, and demonstrate, logically, the generalization 
of principles which underlie its structure." 

Geol. " Our science is plain, as you say, easy of ap- 
prehension, and palpable to the senses of the com- 
monest understanding." 

Chem. "And hence, per se, as a science, I should 
conclude there was a fallacy planted in depths so 
profound, and yet assumed to be so simple. But let 
us endeavor to ascertain on tvhat the whole science, as 
claimed, is based ; and for that purpose can you tell me 
the number of elements which make up the science ? 
I mean by that, the salient points upon which it de- 
pends." 



84 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

Geol " There being no proof of what existed before 
the historic age of man, you may say it depends on 
appearances. This is the sole element in fact, and that 
element is subdivided into many classes of appear- 
ances. First, There is a class of appearances derived 
from the primitive and metamorphic rocks, which indi- 
cate that portions of them have been in a state of 
fusion, and the entire mass of them have been claimed 
by geologists, on this account, to have had an igneous 
origin. Though I will have the candor to say, that 
there is no positive evidence on the face of them of 
such an origin, and I do not think any geologist should 
maintain it. Second, There is a class of appearances in 
what we call sedimentary rocks, and they are so de- 
nominated from two causes. 

u First, Their structure, and 

a Second, Their contents. 

" The first is assumed because they are found to con- 
tain seams and fissures, and are in layers as a general 
rule. 

" The second, their contents, which are fossil minerals, 
and are supposed to have succeeded animal and vege- 
table life, which they represent, and were not made in 
their places by a creative fiat. 

" There are various other minor appearances which 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 85 

aid to make up the data of the science, but these are 
the most important." 

Chem. "Would the first and second classes of ap- 
pearances, alone be sufficient to found your present 
science upon, without the fossil minerals which these 
rocks contain V 

Geol. " Nothing could be arrived at without the 
fossil." 

Chem. "Then the vitality of your science depends 
upon the age of the fossil. So that if all the so-claimed 
pre-Adamite fossils in the rocks were made by a crea- 
tive fiat, and the rocks themselves made in the same 
way, there would be nothing left of the science of 
geology. It would then be old-fashioned mineralogy V 

Geol. " Most certainly ; but there is not much fear 
that such a state of things can be made to appear, no 
sooner than we can show positively that animals and 
plants did precede fossils which we find." 

Chem. "The whole science of geology, so-called, 
then, resolves itself into the small compass of a simple 
matter of Faith, that the fossils contained in the pre-Adamite 
rocks, ivere preceded in all instances by animal and plant 
lifer 

Geol. " We can not deny your proposition ; but at 
the same time we hold very strong to that faith T 



86 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

Chem. " You will find no difficulty in obtaining dis- 
ciples in a department where science is so cheap and 
easily obtained, by the mere assumption of the garb. 
Though a rigorous investigation will show that the 
entire fabric of such assumption, is faith in the mode 
and manner in which one class of archetypes in na- 
ture were introduced in place, and that faith is re- 
ceived at the expense of physical difficulties in the 
laws of nature, quite irreconcilable with true science, and 
a far superior and Christian faith diametrically opposed 
to it. The mode of introduction of the fossil kingdom 
into place, must yield to the law of universality al- 
lowed to all other kingdoms in nature. How do you 
classify fossils ?" 

Geol. u Into two great classes, the pre- Adamite and 
the post-Adamite fossils ; the former being those com- 
pleted before the sixth Mosaic day, and the latter those 
which have been made since." 

Chem. u There is no difference of opinion respecting 
post-Adamite fossils; the whole controversy rests on 
the pre-Adamite field." 

Geol. « That is true." 

Chem. '• How, then, shall we draw the division closer 
still r 

Geol. " You believe these mere Mosaic pre-Adamite 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 87 

fossils were made by fiat law; while we think they 
were preceded by vegetable and animal life, and were 
made by development." 

Chem. " You may, then, divide the pre-Adamite fos- 
sils into Mosaic and geologic ; and the question of dif- 
ference of faith between us lies in this, that we believe 
them to have been the subject of fiat laiv, while you 
believe them to have been the result of development ?" 

Geol " Exactly ; this is the ground. We simply pre- 
sent to the world the facts developed by the fossil 
kingdom and its dependencies, and state what our in- 
dividual belief is, leaving others to believe or not, as 
they choose. You can not blame us for our faith, or 
for the faith of others." 

Chem. " By no means ; nor would we blame the In- 
dian or any heathen for their religious faith, provided 
they have been so educated, and had no other from 
which to choose. It is so with the community : if they 
continue to hear nothing but ' geology,' i detrital sedi- 
ments,' ' upheavals,' ' fossils,' and ' fossils,' and -'fossils' 
again, the dogmas connected with them become ste- 
reotyped upon the public mind; and, whether it be 
error or truth thence evolved, the result is the same 
practically." 

Geol "You have led me away from the physical 



88 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

facts upon which we commenced our conversation ; 
and, while I do not object to speak of first causes, 
there is nothing which can be arrived at by their dis- 
cussion that will lead to a scientific result : and I there- 
fore would prefer the discussion of the facts, rather 
than the faith connected with their origin." 

Ohem. " But you forget that in this lies your whole 
science. The origin of your facts is the ivhole question ; 
and, if you did but discuss the facts, then, as I before 
remarked, your science would be simply mineralogy. 
But you add to mineralogy a theory of the origin of 
its children, and pretend to tell the birth and age of 
each. The circumstances attending the birth of the 
pre-Adamite fossils are your especial science, which, 
as you have said before, being self-evident, is simply 
faith without proof. If you could demonstrate the ori- 
gin of your fads, then you could prove your science ; 
but, until you can do this, my faith that one portion of 
the fossil kingdom (the pre-Adamite) was made by a 
creative fiat, while all since that have followed a law 
at that time established and made effective, is as rea- 
sonable on the face of it as yours. And if you placed 
all the kingdoms of creation upon one basis, and asserted 
that each has evolved from some generative cause in the 
absence of divine revelation and a Creator, your faith 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 89 

would abstractly be as reasonable as mine. But your 
trouble lies in the fact that, after following divine rev- 
elation in the establishment of all the kingdoms except 
the fossil kingdom, you branch off at this point, and 
say this is an exception ; and yet you can give no 
proof of your assertion, while general reasoning must 
bring you to a different conclusion." 

Geol. "Then you have the idea that all the pre- 
Adamite rocks of the earth were made by a creative 
fiat, and came from the hand of God as we now find 
them ?" 

Chem. " Individually I do, and for this reason : that 
if I admit any one portion of creation to have been 
the subject of fiat law, it seems that I violate all analo- 
gies if I deny it to another where no proof can be ad- 
duced to show a different origin. But that violation 
of analogies becomes still more flagrant when I admit 
it to all, and deny it to one, on no proof whatever!' 

Geol u Well, all I can say is, that your faith is aston- 
ishingly strong, if you can believe that the pre- Adam- 
ite rocks were made as they now are by a Divine hand 
and creative fiat I" 

Chem. " You think otherwise ; and now let us look 
at the grounds which separate us on the abstract fact. 
Is there any more difficulty or intricacy in the making 



90 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

of any geologic rock, as an archetype, than there is in 
the making of a man, a tree, or an animal, as such ? 
Each, you must remember, has its peculiar elements, 
which make up the whole ; and if reformed by natural 
means, these elements again assume their places, to 
complete the result." 

Geol. "Yes, there is, and quite a difference. The 
rock is made by successive external additions ; while 
each of the others — the tree, the man, or the animal 
— is produced by another and quite a different mode, 
adding internally the matter necessary to growth, in- 
stead of externally." 

Chem. " You must not confound two quite different 
principles, the one governing the introduction of arche- 
types, and the other natural laws governing their 
growth. The two have no possible connection with 
each other; and their blending together, it strikes me. 
is the groundwork of the error in your theory. My 
proposition was this : admitting the geologic rock to 
have been made like the plant, the animal, or man, by 
a creative fiat, is there more mystery, difficulty, or in- 
tricacy, in the making of the former in archetypes than 
of the latter?" 

Geol u Taking that view of the case, I can not see 
much difference ; and, if there be any, it is in favor of 



KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 91 

the plant, the animal, and man, over the rocks, since 
each is a higher organism in Nature. The plant is the 
lowest, the animal the next, and man the highest." 

Chem. "Abstract reasoning, then, brings you, as it 
will undoubtedly every ingenuous mind, to the conclu- 
sion that there is more mystery, difficulty, and intrica- 
cy, in summoning the mind to acknowledge and admit 
the making of such archetypes, than those of the rock 
formations. And while we admit the former very 
readily, as being our faith grounded on education, 
many deny the latter, from what seems to me a want 
of self-education and close, analogical reasoning." 

Geol. "You may reason as much as you like, and 
frame your analogies how you may, you never can 
make me believe, and I will not speak definitely for 
others ; but I think you will never make geologists be- 
lieve your postulate that the pre-Adamite rocks came 
from the hand of the Creator by fiat law substantially 
as we now find them." 

Chem. " This I do not expect ; for you must remem- 
ber that those who teach a dogma, if it be grounded in 
faith, as this is, are the last individuals to stultify them- 
selves. The only mode of curing geology, if it ever is 
cured, is to kill off the demand for the wonderful sto- 
ries which it relates of scenes in a past world, exist- 



92 KINGDOMS IN LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

ing only in imagination, and which are educating the 
world in an unsound, unequilibriated, and false faith as 
to the creation of this earth. And now, Mr. Geologist, 
as we have had a very full conversation, pleasant be- 
cause moderate, with your permission we will postpone 
our interview till some future day, when these sugges- 
tions, which are but general, will, it is hoped, lead your 
mind into a true and rigid train of analogical reason- 
ing upon the facts of the science which you advocate ; 
and that you will suppress in it that portion resting 
entirely on faith, rendering '■ unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's.' But should you yet determine to mingle 
your faith with your science, make one that is worthy 
of you. Incorporate upon it a religion worthy of such 
faith, and submit the fabric as such to geologists and 
their proselytes for acceptance ; and Time will tell you 
whether there is enough in admitting archetypes with- 
out parents, or fiat law, to all lines of existences, num- 
being over three or four hundred thousand, excepting 
one, and that the fossil mineral, to make your faith im- 
perishable and your so-called science true." 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 93 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

This sublime production asserts, from inferences fair- 
ly drawn from its first sentence, that God, having com- 
pleted the design of creation, commenced its execution 
by manifesting his first fiats upon the heaven and the 
earth. From the conclusions which are drawn out of 
the account itself, heaven, as the original also indicates, 
is expanse or space ; and earth, as we well know, is 
matter in combination, and in this connection is earth 
still, but was in a state zvithout form, and the place of its 
future was void. 

It then becomes a philological question in one sense, 
as well as a scientific one in another, to resolve what 
state matter must have been in, which was without 
form and void. If it was conglomerate at all, it had 
some form ; and where matter is, there certainly is no 
vacuum or void. The only reasonable answer which 
can be given is, that matter was fiated into existence 
in its loivest division, its primordial particle state, which we 



94 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

well know lias no form ; and that that part of heaven, 
or space, in which the combination was to be made to 
cause " the dry land" to appear, was void. 

Those geologists who have taken a limited view of 
the nature of the fossil, have seen a wide field of open- 
ness " in the beginning," which has shaped their minds 
to the conclusion that in this vast territory of their 
fancy, or at least before what they denominate the 
Mosaic creation proper, there was room for all geologic 
changes. As a plausible geologic argument, it may 
not be out of place ; but when the dead conflict with 
the fourth commandment must have been before the 
eyes of at least the theologic portion of them, we 
scarcely know what to think of their awkward posi- 
tions respecting the Scriptures. The first three words 
of our Bible have possibly aided many to adopt such 
notions, from the fact that they would seem to refer 
to an indefinite, indescribable something, one road of 
which led to the Mosaic creation. 

The fault, if it be one, is alone attributable to the 
requirements of our English grammar, which compel 
the introduction of the particle " the" before beginning. 
The original reads, " In beginning ;" and hence we can 
read the first sentence of Scripture understanding^ 
thus : — 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 95 

"In beginning, or commencing, God created the heaven and 
the earth" 

This narrows the first creative fiat to a point, and 
shows that God created or fiated the heaven and the 
earth into existence, and did not make the latter geolo- 
gically. In this view of the introduction of matter into 
space, there would seem to be required some explana- 
tion of the expression of Moses which immediately fol- 
lows : "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
ivaters." It would scarcely be becoming for any one to 
undertake an explanation ivhy the Creator saw fit to 
move upon the face of the waters ; though it may be 
in place to show the condition of what was denomi- 
nated ivaters, in order to present the natural phenom- 
ena enabling him to do so. 

Just as the word " earth" is used, as we have seen, 
to express or denote matter in primordial elements, 
so "waters" here are used to denote the primordial 
elements of which they are composed. Water and air, 
as will be seen, were made from the elements on the 
second Mosaic day. Moses, who is not supposed to 
have known much about gases or atmospheres (and 
hence had not the language to express his inspiration 
in better terms than he has), nevertheless so far ex- 
plains them, that the idea is as truly expressed as 



96 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

though he lived in the nineteenth century. He makes 
the clear distinction, too, between creative fiats and fiat 
combinations. This will not be observed except by the 
close reader. There are four original principles which 
make up entities, as far, at best, as this earth is con- 
cerned. The first is space; the second, matter ; the 
third, animal life ; and the fourth, the immortal life of 
man. From these four original principles all combina- 
tions in Nature are made. Hence, with an accuracy 
only due to revelation, Moses indicates the creation of 
these four cardinals by the term created in the account 
just where they are introduced, and uses this term no- 
where else. When a combination is fiated into exist- 
ence, the terms are various, such as, "Let there be," 
"Let sprout forth," "Let bring forth," "Let us make." 

Hence, it must be patent to the geologist that the 
Mosaic creative account is carefully done, whoever may 
be charged with its authorship ; and we think it will 
require more than the assignment of previous life to 
the pre-Adamite fossils to overthrow it, especially as 
they may be bound to the rule of fiat combinations 
easier than to make them the single exception. 

Let us now proceed with the explanation of the 
two important and governing terms of the Mosaic cre- 
ation, heaven and earth. Many writers, in quoting the 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 97 

first sentence in Scripture, use the s in heaven, making 
it plural. We do not find this in the original, either 
in the first or second chapters, nor in the place re- 
ferred to in our Bible. It always has been our belief, 
and that is becoming confirmed every day, that the 
Scriptures are so equilibriated and balanced in every 
part, that they furnish upon their own pages defini- 
tions of doubtful terms and phrases. 

Hence we need not give our own gloss to the term 
heaven, for we can gain its definition from the record 
itself. The object to be determined, is not what its 
usual signification was in the original language when 
applied to other things, but what the thing is here for 
which the term stands. On a microscopic view of the 
whole account, heaven, in this connection, means space, 
or expanse, or vacuum. In the fifth day it is measurably 
explained. "Fowl that may fly above the earth, in the open 
firmament of heaven." 

What is our experience, in a scientific point of view, 
respecting the wing-bearing principle of the aerial 
navigators. That the atmosphere, or as here, and in 
the second day's work expressed to be firmament, is 
the wing-supporting power, and hence the firmament, in 
which they fly, is air. We further know, that air is 
within the great vacuum, and is of it, but yet is not 

7 



98 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

the thing itself, and hence, that they are separate 
things, and expressed by different names, the one 
being firmament or air within the vacuum — space — or 
heaven. 

Whatever may be the form, nature, or condition of 
the final blissful abode to which we are going, denomi- 
nated heaven in other portions of the Scripture, that 
must of necessity, from the explanations given in 
revelation, be another "heaven." As is well known, 
we use the same terms to express quite opposite mean- 
ings ; and it is the meanings that iix the terms, and 
not always the terms which fix the meanings. The 
same name may attach to a variety of individuals, and 
we must refer to the surroundings of the man to explain 
who he is. 

Now, in respect to the word Earth, used in the first 
chapter of Genesis, and the same term as used in the 
second, we think they are of widely different meanings, 
because of the spontaneous explanations in the record 
itself. It has three meanings, in fact, so far as claimed 
by the explanations of Moses. 

First. Earth without form and void. 

Second. Earth, " dry land," " with form." 

Third. Earth, this planet organized. 

To the want of these meanings, which are to be 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 99 

drawn from the face of the record itself, must be at- 
tributed much of the difficulty which has been felt 
in making a unit of the Biblical account of creation. 
For while all chemistry and science have well known 
that primordial matter must first have been made, in 
order to compound the various forms in nature, they 
were not prepared to find tliat matter expressed under 
the term, earth without form and void, the identical state 
in which it must, of necessity, have been, in order to 
make entities in the universe according to existing 
laws of nature. 

And when many of these primordial elements were 
combined on the third Mosaic day, when land and 
water were arranged together, and earth was in that 
conglomerate state called " dry land" (which we well 
know is the first earth in another form, because dry 
land contains every known primordial particle of mat- 
ter in combination), there is a harmony and a truth- 
fulness in the spontaneous explanations of the work 
itself which prove its origin. 

In the specification and application of rivers and 
states, certainly pointing to the first condition of this 
earth, which commences with the fourth verse of the 
second chapter, begins the third meaning. The first 
chapter is the account of the creation of the universe, 



100 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

while the second goes on relating the condition of 
the man in the garden of Eden, his fall, and the conse- 
quences to mankind of his disobedience. 

The account proceeds to state, that after space and 
matter in primordial elements were created, light was 
made by a combination fiat. We see no grounds for 
assuming the contrary, and hence, infer that all light 
which is now in the universe, was made at one and 
the same time, and of the three primordial rays ; also 
all the subtiles directly and indirectly connected with 
it. It is well known that most matter manifests a 
different state at night, from that of the day, except 
light, which is the same at all times. 

Hence light could be combined on the same day on 
which its primordial elements were created, without 
violation of natural law, while other matter required 
to lie over till the second day to make its first cycle of 
existence, of day, evening, night, and morning complete, 
and prepared as perfect elements for the fiat combina- 
tions of that day. 

Thus we conclude that, as all light was made at this 
time, every ray, joining this earth's void with all other 
points of space, was in place thoughout the universe 
on the instant that light was completed. This stulti- 
fies the theories of astronomers, who claim, as proof 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 101 

that the world has been longer in action than the 
Biblical chronology calls for, because it would take 
light millions of years to arrive at the earth from 
remote stars; travelling at the rate of two hundred 
thousand miles in a second of time. 

The general theory is, that light is not matter, and 
whether it is or not, is of no moment as to the fact of 
its creation. For whether it be matter or the mani- 
festation of it, is of little consequence. It is what it 
is ; and was made as we have related. 

The first three days, which may be regarded as 
natural days, were made so by withdrawing the light 
at night, and making it manifest by day, until the 
revolutions of the heavenly bodies were established 
on the fourth day. 

The work of the second day consisted in making 
pure air and pare water from the gases or primordial 
elements, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. It will be 
observed, as a peculiarity in the account given of this 
day's work, that it lacks the confirmatory clause of — 
" God saw that it was good? Its omission here, and its 
careful attachment to each of the other five days, led 
to a searching investigation of what this could mean. 
Every word of the record is so pregnant with meaning, 
that the failure here, of what we considered the essence 



102 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

of the narrative, malting for the uses of man, that it 
seemed at first a stumbling block, a weakness, or an 
omission. 

After much labor, and the application of principles 
as to the necessities of the formations of the third day, 
we found that every department in nature, claimed by 
the account to have been introduced on that day, 
required pure air and pure water for their formation, 
according to chemical synthesis. Hence was found 
what we suppose is an answer to the peculiarity, and, 
certainly, it is a true one, if the earth was formed as 
stated by Moses. 

On the succeeding third day, these same waters 
were not only used in combinations of solid substances, 
but were gathered together in places to make seas, 
rivers, &c, and what we call their impurities were 
then added, and they became " good." 

The remainder of the third day's work consisted in 
making all geology, except that which has been disin- 
tegrated and re-formed into other like things since ; 
and establishing the vegetable kingdom. On this 
day the great reservoirs of earth without form were, 
by the exercise of flat laiv in combination, placed in posi- 
tion in, and throughout this vast extent, and dry land 
appeared to God, which, being composed of materials 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 103 

already referred to, was named by the Creator earth 
still, or " dry land." 

Thus were all forms which were to occupy this 
planet finished, except the animal and man, and the 
laws which were to regulate their existence, estab- 
lished, yet no motion had been communicated to a 
single form in nature — all was quiet. 

It is argued from analogy, that every heavenly body 
was, in manner like the earth, moulded in place, and 
like this planet, too, lay motionless in the first point 
of their orbits respectively. 

The fourth day dawned, and the light, which was as 
yet unattached to the heavenly bodies, and had no 
existence except in its fixedness, was mysteriously 
joined to them, they first having been endowed with the 
power to emit light, while other heavenly bodies had 
the quality given them to reflect that light, and hence 
we have two kinds of heavenly light — emitted and 
reflected. 

And now the vast machinery of the universe was 
prepared for motion. The great law of equilibrium 
in nature was established, and the Creator gave his 
command — "move on thou rolling orbs, and in your 
united beauty and harmony establish two luminaries, 
the greater to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the 



104 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT O'F CREATION. 

night ; and be for signs, and for seasons, and for daj^s, 
and for years ; let the stars also obey this command." 
Movements onward in their orbits, and roundward on 
their axes followed, and gravity was coeval in its birth 
with equilibrium and motion. 

It is quite a common interpretation to suppose the 
sun and moon were made on the fourth Mosaic day. 
We have never found the fact stated, either in the 
Bible or in the original, and hence, we must suppose 
they were not. And if they had been so named, by a 
little reflection it will be seen, that the " greater lumi- 
nary," as the sun, does not rule the day, because there 
is star-light and reflected light, which aid to make up, 
with the sun-light, the greater luminary ; while, for a 
still stronger reason, the moon does not rule the night, 
for there are times when it is not visible at all, as a 
lesser luminary. The greater luminary is the combined 
light of the sun, stars, and reflected light from other 
heavenly bodies, to produce the sum total of light. 
And the lesser luminary is the same light at night, 
with lesser intensity, because of the absence of the 
sun. 

The work of the fifth day was in character, by 
creative fiat, and by fiat combinations — the first, the 
creating of animal life, and the second the making 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 105 

archetype forms of fishes, aquatic animals, and fowls 
of the air. 

The work of the sixth day consisted, in like manner, 
of two kinds of fiat introductions — the archetype 
forms of the remaining animals, cattle and creeping 
thing, and the crowning act of the creative energy, 
the creating of immortal life in man. 

The work was finished on the seventh day, and God 
ceased to do more, in creating and making ; and hence, 
we infer, that no new creations have been made since 
that time, which corresponds with all history, and 
scientific deductions, reasoning from a complete equi- 
librated system. 

The engraving on page 107, is designed to illustrate 
the six days' work, and the kind of work done in each. 
From every one, run the parallel shaded lines to the 
bottom of the page, which may be supposed to repre- 
sent lines of existences, commencing at their day of 
creation, and continuing down to the present time. 
Each may be assumed as any one entity, which is 
reproduced, or is reproducing itself by natural laws. 
They begin with space, matter, and light, each of the 
elements of which have continued the same to the 
present day, and hence the right lines representing 



106 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

them. The second day is the minerals and vegetables, 
which commenced and have continued in lines of 
reproduction since, and so on, till the entire six days' 
work started in equilibrium on the seventh day. This 
has, we think, continued unchanged in the lapse of 
time since the Mosaic creation, no matter by what 
chronology that event may be measured as having 
happened in the past. 

And the relations between these various lines, the 
one with the other, seem to be a demonstration in them- 
selves, that these mutual dependencies have never been 
changed. Hence the theorist, who grounds his dreams 
upon such changes, nay, total obliteration of them, 
time and again, simply to give force to the anti-Biblical 
Christian faith, that the fossil is a sole exception to fiat 
law, certainly must, in all honesty, acknowledge that the 
parallel lines displayed on the next page, are stubborn 
and wilful witnesses against him. Let him move them 
if he can, or let him arrest their onward course in 
nature ; when he can do either, then let him pronounce 
the geologic faith founded in an exception, superior to 
the Biblical Christian faith, founded in the rule of fiat 
laiv, and upon the unyielding parallel lines which he 
can now see before him. 



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THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 109 

We have thus given a reading of the Mosaic account 
found inside — not outside of the record. There are 
numerous comments on this narrative, and we may be 
wrong in some of our exegeses, but they have been 
carefully considered, and we think they will stand the 
test of the severest science, philology, and theology. 
A more detailed elaboration is given in another work, 
where fuller explanations of our positions will be 
found. 

In examining the account simply as an hypothesis 
of a creation, there are two elements which are most 
prominent to the reader, "time" and "order." It 
would be as absurd, regarding the philological truth 
of the narrative, to call the work done in the sixth 
day, that which was done in the first, as it would be to 
make any similar substitution of the work done at one 
portion of the account, for that recorded to have been 
done at another — or to change in tiie slightest degree 
the order of introduction of the elements as stated 
therein. 

Hence any hypothesis (whether it be true or not) 
which changes the order of the introduction of any 
one of these elements, is a new and distinct hypothesis 
from this, and can have no allegiance to the Mosaic, 
and if its advocates claim its truth, and urge its recep. 



110 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

tion, they, in the same breath, declare the truth of the 
one and the falsity of the other. There is no relief 
to be obtained from this cardinal principle, and, how- 
ever much men may have deceived themselves, by 
allowing their judgments to be warped in entertaining 
such doctrines, the fault does not lie in the principle 
itself, but in the carelessness with which such indiscre- 
tions are committed touching what the world receive 
as the inspired word of God. 

What, then, do we find to be the "time" of this 
account ? or, is its time named at all ? " In begin- 
ning" is the first of the time of the work in which 
" God created the heaven and the earth." Will any 
one den}', seriously, that this was the beginning ? But 
more than this, had this earth, or the universe of mat- 
ter, or whatever may be comprehended by the term 
"earth," been combined as a whole, revolving or sta- 
tionary, as denoted by this term ? Would the prophet 
emphatically declare that which " had forwtf to be ivithont 
form ? Where is that man of letters, who, in the care- 
lessness of construction, will unwittingly crowd back 
upon God, the words of his prophet, and hold that 
" earth," whatever was meant by it, had form. 

Let the philologist be candid and true to himself, 
and, if he will ignore 1!he Mosaic record, then be bold 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. Ill 

and say the " earth/' at this epoch, had form, or what 
is tantamount to the same thing, that no record of the 
formation of the earth (meaning this -planet) is given, 
except it be found in the above expression. Whereas, 
we think the truth of this expression may be acknowl- 
edged, in the w T ell-established scientific synthesis, that 
all matter must have been made at first in primordial 
particles, and subsequently combined, as is recorded in 
the second, third, fifth, and sixth days' work. 

The entire w r ork of the first day, including the 
making of combined light, must have been performed 
simultaneously at the dawn of the first day. Its 
account could then be read understandingly, if it 
ran thus : " In beginning, which was at the dawn of 
the first day, God created the space and matter, in 
primordial elements, and made light for the universe." 
In a synthetical point of view what would of neces- 
sity follow the introduction of the elements to which 
we refer, and which were "without form," and the 
place of their combination was a " void," or a a vacu- 
um," or simply u space ?" 

In running down this channel of creation, the mind 
instinctively calls for the " forms" of things, or combi- 
nations of those elements already made, which had no 
form. As a stepping-stone to that result, science re- 



112 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

quires the making complete those substances which 
are necessary to make subsequent combinations. Hence 
the necessity of the second day's work, before the com- 
pletion of all forms of matter in Nature (except ani- 
mal life and man) which constituted the third day's 
work, pure air and pure water. Analytical chemistry 
develops the fact, as we have before stated, that these 
are necessary, singly or together, to constitute most 
forms of matter when aggregated of primordial ele- 
ments. 

The use of these agents in making the a dry land 
appear," as the account states, is well known to every 
scientific man, and especially to the synthetical chem- 
ist. To whom did these combinations appear? Not 
to man or to animal, but to God. "Let the dry land 
appear," was his command, and from all we can discern 
was directed alone to the primordial elements compo- 
sing u dry land," to take their places in combination in 
the various forms of the mineral kingdom. 

We invite the special attention of the friends of the 
theories of Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Pye Smith, and in truth 
the long line of reconcilists of geologic theories with 
the Mosaic account, who have taken written ground on 
that subject, to the fair consideration of the expression 
which we have just quoted, " Let the dry land appear." 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 113 

In viewing this matter with candor, it has occurred (as 
a means of testing the influence of geological discov- 
eries, as they are termed, in warping and distorting 
the statement of plain facts contained in the Mosaic 
account) to ask this question : u If the original facts of 
the fossil minerals had never been discovered, what 
would be the construction placed upon this expres- 
sion (we do not speak now of the inferences drawn 
from these facts, but simply of the facts themselves as 
entities) ? and how would the work of the first three 
days have been explained ?" The difference between 
the true answers to these questions and those dictated 
by their theories, will show how far the true philologi- 
cal interpretation of the word has been swayed by the 
latter suppositions. 

The question, then, naturally arises, u Did the dry land 
appear for the first time, as stated by Moses ? or had it 
appeared before to God, as stated by Dr. Chalmers, Dr. 
Pye Smith, and others ?" If it had appeared before, as 
they state, the Mosaic account is untrue in inference 
and plain philological construction. 

Mr. Hugh Miller gives, in a very condensed form^ 
the theory of Dr. Chalmers, which is more universally 
adopted by the theological geologists than any other. 
a It teaches, and teaches truly," he says, u that between 

8 



114 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

the first act of creation, which evoked out of the pre- 
vious nothing the matter of the heavens and the earth, 
and the first act of the first day's work recorded in 
Genesis, periods of vast duration may have intervened ; 
but further, it insists that the days themselves were 
but natural days of twenty-four hours each ; and that, 
ere they began, the earth, though mayhap in the pre- 
vious period a fair residence of life, had become void 
and formless ; and the sun, and moon, and stars, though 
mayhap they had before given light, had been, at least 
in relation to our planet, temporarily extinguished." 

This is Dr. Chalmers's theory in 1814 ; and, as Mr. 
Miller truly remarks, "the scheme of reconciliation, 
perfectly adequate in 1814, was proved in 1839 no 
longer so." And he further adds, in respect to that of 
Dr. Pye Smith, "It virtually removes Scripture out of the 
field. I must confess, however, that on this and some 
other accounts, it has failed to satisfy me." Hence the 
Miller hypothesis, which we will consider hereafter. 

This is chopping up Scripture in a way which we 
most decidedly protest against ; and, in the mile, it is 
difficult to tell, from the accounts of the contestants, 
which receive the severest wounds, the assailants or 
the assailed. 

As the " reconciliations" of the learned divines are 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 115 

often quoted as valid, let us glance for a moment at 
the elements of this Mosaic and geologic theology. If 
the rule of evidence which is applied to an ordinary 
witness, in a common court of justice, be applied to 
the great witness who gave to the w r orld his testimony 
about the creation, we should expect to find in that 
account, not only the truth, but the tvhole truth, wad. noth- 
ing but the truth. If, then, we should expect to find the 
whole truth respecting a creation, would that account be 
partial ? Would that account state that light was made 
on the first day, when it had existed chiliads of years, 
if not an eternity before ? Would the witness state 
that all things were made in six days, when only a 
portion were so made ? In short, would he give an 
account out of which by no possible means could be 
wrenched the truth till other and then unborn witnes- 
ses should spring up, each in his turn contradicting his 
neighbor, and each in his turn insisting that the other 
u virtually removes Scripture out of the field" ? 

Then to which one of these eminent geologists are we 
to turn for the truth, if there be truth in their interpre- 
tation of the elements of rock-formations, upon which 
to frame an hypothesis of a creation ? If we had as- 
signed us the task to show the inconsistencies of each, 
we fear the reader would tire; tve certainly should. 



116 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

But, as the whole question of conflict between geo- 
logic theories and Scripture turns upon one single point, 
whatever may be the detailed views of each practi- 
tioner in the fossil art, it will not affect the one idea 
which is common to all. 

The coincident element which they claim is, that the 
pre- Adamite fossils were all preceded by vegetable and animal 
life. They also claim the same with respect to post- 
Adamite fossils, and in this latter all agree. But if the 
pre- Adamite fossils were all preceded by vegetable and 
animal life, there is a clear and distinct conflict in 
terms between any dogma, which claims this to be 
true, and the Scriptures. For, on the ground stated 
before of the witness, if he states the truth, he must 
likewise state the whole truth ; and if he has stated 
the whole truth, and said nothing of previous crea- 
tions, he has not told the whole truth ; and if he has 
stated nothing but the truth, he has certainly not told 
the truth when he reiterates in the fourth command- 
ment that all things in heaven and earth were made in six 
days. 

Now, if the fossils, and fossiliferous and other rocks, 
and their contents, were not made in six days, one or 
the other of the two statements must of necessity be 
quite imaginative, to use no harsher term. 



THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 117 

This single point of differing faith — that is, whether 
the pre-Adamite fossils were or were not preceded by 
vegetable and animal life — is the only difference be- 
tween geologic and scriptural ground. While the ge- 
ologist admits every other line of existence to have 
started by a creative fiat, in completed form, without 
parents, he denies that rule to the fossil kingdom. 
There may he grounds for such a supposition, and there 
may he sufficient reasons yet shown to prove the postu- 
late ; but we have looked in vain for them, and think 
none have been or ever can be given. These learned 
theologians have read the scriptural faith loosely at 
best, and we are utterly at a loss to imagine whither 
their acumen in philology could have betaken itself. 
But if, on the other hand, their faith in the pre-Adamite 
fossils having been preceded by vegetable and animal 
life was superior to their faith in the statement of 
Moses that everything in heaven and earth (which in- 
cludes these fossils) was made in six days, the learned 
divines had the right and it was their privilege to as- 
sert such faith ; and that, too, with the boldness of a 
Luther or a Calvin. 

While, however, we admit their undoubted right to 
enjoy their peculiar faith, we at the same time most 
strenuously protest against the implied promulgated 



118 THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 

doctrine that flat denials of Christian and received 
faith are religious coincidences. Nor can more be said 
for such individuals than to find a charitable excuse 
for them, based in the broad errors to which the hu- 
man mind is naturally subject. In some instances, 
they are the feeble, tremulous Christians who make it 
a business to attempt to patch up the supposed defi- 
ciencies of the Bible by careful attention to what they 
imagine its weaknesses. We are of opinion that no 
ordinary attack upon the Word is worth noticing; but 
when teachers turn traitors to their trusts (whether 
through error in conclusion or not), and from this 
cause the pulpit, instead of resounding with the har- 
monies of revelation, is made to ring with the death- 
knell of Holy Writ, it should startle into sublime ac- 
tion the dormant energies of those who can raise a 
voice or wield a pen, to say, 6i Hold !" 



CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH. 119 



CHAPTER V. 

CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH WITH SCIENCE AND THE 

SCRIPTURES. 

If, on a full and fair investigation of the grounds 
upon which the geologic faith rests, it shall be found 
that there are more natural phenomena which can be 
satisfied 'by giving the pre- Adamite fossils the rank 
which geologists claim for them as against the oppo- 
site ground, then it will be left for each individual to 
say whether he will cast aside the Scriptures, alter the 
fourth commandment, and change the substance of the 
Bible thus far, or accept it as it is. It is a fact con- 
ceded by all scientific men, that the Mosaic account, if 
assumed as true, satisfies all the phenomena of Nature, 
while the geologic faith satisfies but few comparative- 
ly ; and hence, in a scientific point of view, independ- 
ent of Divine revelation, is the superior hypothesis : 
for each hypothesis, judged on this ground, must be 
referred to this one co-ordinate of truth. 



120 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

The vast array of difficulties which even a geologist 
himself finds in closing up any conceivable rational 
hypothesis, are counted in great numbers, even in any 
one stratified rock and its contents. But when the 
rules of settled science assume the task, it is utterly 
hopeless even to make a starting-point. For the sim- 
plest understanding of philosophical principles teaches 
that you must have an equilibrium in Nature at all 
times. Hence, if you start your geologic formations 
in fusion, in solution, or from one kind of rock-forma- 
tion, it will be seen at once that if such a state in Na- 
ture was in equilibrium, the next was not ; and there- 
fore a new set of natural laws is required to operate it. 

But all these points have been fully discussed in 
another work, and need not be here repeated, except 
in a condensed form. Nevertheless, we reassert, as we 
did there assert, that the reasons which have been thus 
far adduced to support the geologic faith (that all pre- 
Adamite fossils were preceded by vegetable and ani- 
mal life) are false to all equilibriated science : — 

First. Because they require, as necessary to support 
that faith, the free action in igneous fluidity of matter, 
previous to the making of all first forms in Nature, 
which involves the absence of existing affinities and 
qualities of matter, and an equal degree of fusibility 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 121 

of all known substances, which is absurd, since all the 
metals (except, possibly, platinum) and minerals are 
destroyed at a temperature which will melt granite 
rock. 

Second. They claim, also, as necessary, a succession 
in forms of matter, which noiv have mutual dependencies, 
and hence this entire range of dependencies and affini- 
ties must have been changed (which may be regarded 
as an absurdity in an all- wise design), upon the intro- 
duction of each successive set of completed forms. 

Third. As a result of such claim, the relations be- 
tween organic and inorganic matter, in the successive 
geologic ages, must, of necessity, have been changed 
upon the introduction of a new series, and hence in- 
volves, at each, the reorganization of previous natural 
laws — because the inorganic elements, which now 
support the organic, are not common to each geologic 
age in which the organic is claimed to have existed. 

Fourth. And further, the existing intimate relations 
between the mineral kingdom and organic nature, in 
administering to the wants of the latter, is made opera- 
tive through the combined agency of all roclc-formations 
and the rains. It is a well-known fact, that all plants, 
animals, and man, woidd cease to exist, but for this rela- 
tion, and the means to support it. The manner in 



122 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

which this relation is kept up is apparent, since the 
rains percolate the fissures of the rocks, and pick out 
the mineral matter required ; and differences of levels 
made by the mountains and irregularities of the sur- 
face of the earth, enable these waters, thus burdened 
for distribution where necessity requires, to follow 
down their paths, till they at last arrive at the ocean, 
whence they are again evaporated, and again sent to 
perform the duty assigned them. Hence, if the pre- 
Adamite fossils were preceded by life, it will become 
necessary, as a consequence, for those holding that 
faith, to show by what means that pre-Adamite life 
was fed and sustained without these sedimentary rocks, 
and the present order of rock-formations. 

Fifth. As to the mode of natural action required at 
first to compose the so-called sedimentary rocks, three 
agents are assumed as directly engaged to bring about 
the result. First, the granite rock proper; second, 
chemical agency ; and third, water. Like causes produce 
like results. Hence, the same three causes being en- 
gaged, the varied results said to be obtained, require a 
fundamental change in the laws of nature at the com- 
mencement of any new deposit, or widely-differing 
result ; so that, in completing the scale of the sedi- 
mental rocks, the laws of nature, whatever they may 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 123 

have been, required a fundamental change at each 
step, till existing laws were established. Science, as 
received, knows of no such irregularities, and until the 
geologist shall be able to show, that like causes in 
nature produce differing results, he will fail to get the 
true men of science to subscribe to his pre-Adamite 
fossil faith. 

Sixth. The granite rock is assumed, on the strength 
of this faith, to have been the original holder and 
mother of all substances which are now found over 
it, and composing the so-called sedimentary rocks. 
Hence when, as we do find in these latter rocks, sub- 
stances which can not be found in the granite, nor any-* 
thing allied to those therein found — but which, on the 
contrary, by all known laws, could not claim their 
parentage in that source — it becomes a matter of 
grave speculation with the geologist, in order, as is 
now admitted by many, to reconcile such phenomena 
with the pre-existence of life to the pre-Adamite 
fossils. 

In truth, we might go on citing the contradictions 
to known laws of nature, till the reader, and certainly 
the most zealous geologist would be wearied with the 
list; and while this is so, such is the frame of the 
human mind for novelty and mystery combined, that 



124 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

these stories, wrought out entirely in the imagination, 
are readily assumed as a superior faith to that which 
requires no contradiction. • So that, instead of the 
geologic faith being founded in data, which prove 
themselves, they confound the faith upon which they 
are based, and prove the condition which must have 
ushered into existence the pre-Adamite fossils, as well as 
the rocks which contain them. For as far as our limited 
analogical reasoning goes on such abstractions, of which 
nothing can, of course, be positively known, if we set 
aside revealed truth, we can discover no more mystery 
in making a fossil without a parent, than a crystal, a 
Vegetable, or an animal. But all men are not alike ; 
for some will say — u God would not thus deceive 
man;" while others would say — "Such a deceptive 
history of the earth is inconsistent with the divine 
character." To all such reasoning but little need be 
said, for God is probably as well informed why he has 
chosen to make the world as it is, as they are why he 
did not. The deception, if any, lies with the reader 
of his natural theology. 

The true analogical theologian, or man of science, 
would be most heartily deceived, however, if he found, 
as is true, that all archetype forms were admitted to 
the rank of creative fiat law, and one line of exist- 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 125 

ence was excepted without a reason. If he found in 
nature two things lying along side of each other, of 
the same composition, and only of different forms, the 
one admitted to the flat law, and the other rejected, 
simply on assumption of him who had no grounds to 
advance to prove the differing origin, the logician, the 
theologian, the naturalist, and the man of science 
would be still more heartily deceived. 

If he were a geologist, he might not see the decep- 
tion; but if he was not, and read from nature and 
Moses, the exception would be an adverse fact which 
would destroy all analogies. 

But leaving this branch of the subject, let us turn to 
the Mosaic account; and whatever may be the con- 
flicts in the field which we leave, there are not so 
many, but yet more glaring ones, in that into which 
we are about to enter. Leaving behind all questions 
of faith and things which are based upon it, as well as 
all questions collaterally growing out of " Which is the 
true faith ?" as supported by the greatest number of 
natural phenomena, we will proceed directly to the 
main points of conflict between the geologic theories 
of creation and the Mosaic record, elaborated and re- 
iterated by the fourth commandment, which we re- 
gard as the basis of truth on which the Bible rests. 



126 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

If these pillars, of an ancient and heretofore well-re- 
ceived work, are to be supplanted, by what may be 
termed a superior faith in the pre-existence of life to 
the pre-Adamite fossils, let us at best, before proceed- 
ing to the demolition, ascertain of what kind of metal 
or material the structure is, which we are about to dis- 
integrate and overthrow ; or whether the fair fabric, 
so beautiful in its architectural proportions now, will 
be a unit by the substitution proposed. 

There is, however, one point about which we hold 
ourselves responsible — and it is a responsibility which 
w r e will never evade — it is this : that if the pre-Adamite 
fossils were preceded by vegetable and animal life, then the 
Mosaic account, the fourth commandment, and the Biblical 
dependencies upon them, are unworthy of consideration, and 
are of necessity untrue as the foundation of Biblical and 
Christian faith. 

This conclusion is not assumed — it can be proven 
by the conflicts between the two, not only in natural 
but revealed theology ; and hence the broad charge 
th&t faith based upon life in the pre-Adamite fossils is a 
flat denial of the truth of the Scriptures. 

Hence the following charges and specifications 
against this geologic faith, because of these conflicts 
and its being founded on an exception to fiat law : — 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 127 

CHARGE THE FIRST. 

A denial of the truth of the Mosaic account of creation, the 
fourth commandment, and the Scriptural dependencies thereon. 

SPECIFICATION FIRST. 

In this, that the first chapter of Genesis relates the 
order in which all things were made, extending to six 
days' work. Gen. ii, 2, tells that the work was made 
not only in six days, but finished ; that is, no more was 
performed than was done in those six days. Exodus 
xx, 11, relates, not only that the creation w^as per- 
formed in six natural days, such as the children of Israel 
were enjoying at that time, but that all things in the 
heaven, earth, and sea, nothing excepted, were made in 
six days. Hence, if the pre-Adamite fossils and the 
rocks which contain them were not made in those six 
days (and they could not have been so made if organic 
life had preceded them), then the Mosaic account, the 
fourth commandment, and the Scriptural dependencies 
thereon, are false and utterly unworthy of being re- 
ceived as the basis of a true faith. 

SPECIFICATION SECOND. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims an igneous 
condition at first of all the matter of this earth as es- 



128 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

sential to its truth, and as essential as its foundation. 
If that condition be essential as the main element in a 
creation as stated, any account of a creation, to be 
true, must state this beginning as essential. Hence, the 
Mosaic account, which gives no such idea either by 
inference or otherwise, is at fault, and may be set aside 
as wholly imperfect, if this point of the geologic faith 
be true. 

SPECIFICATION THIRD. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims, as essential to 
the making of existing forms in nature, not only a pre- 
vious igneous condition of matter, but that this matter 
should afterward cool to make the u dry land." If this 
heating and cooling process is essential in a creation, 
then any account which fails to narrate such an essen- 
tial element is untrue as a complete account, and 
should be disregarded. 

SPECIFICATION FOURTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims in pointed tprms, 
and it is its most salient feature, that earth, air, water, 
and light, were made, and were active on this planet, 
myriads of years anterior to the date of the Mosaic 
narrative ; while the Scriptures assert, in unequivocal 
terms, that all things were made in six days. Hence, if 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 129 

the geologic faith be true, the Scriptures, which state 
diametrically the reverse, are false — false in directly 
stated facts, and false as a whole. 

SPECIFICATION EIFTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith asserts as true, that 
animal life precede^ the present vegetable kingdom 
on earth ; whereas, the Mosaic account states in dis- 
tinct terms the reverse — that the present vegetable 
kingdom was made complete two days before animal 
life was created. Hence, if the geologic faith be true 
in this respect, the Mosaic account is false in a direct 
stated fact. 

SPECIFICATION SIXTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith, claims as essential to 
its truth, the making of passive forms of the earth 
from a common mother, the granite rock, by detrital 
and water-wear, requiring millions of years for the 
final completion in perfection of those entities. (These 
passive forms are those which the geologists call fos- 
sils, sedimentary rocks, and their dependencies.) The 
Mosaic account, on the other hand, states that these 
completed forms came direct from the hand of God 
within six natural days. Hence, if the geologic faith 

be true in this respect, the Mosaic account is false 

9 



130 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

in all the points above enumerated, and false as a 
whole. 

SPECIFICATION SEVENTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims, as essential to 
its truth, that many vegetable kingdoms have been 
created, and have passed away chiliads of years before 
the Mosaic epoch of creation. The Mosaic narrative, 
on the other hand, states that the vegetable kingdom 
was completed on the third creative day. Hence, if 
the geologic faith is true, the Mosaic statement is false, 
because the reverse is plainly set forth, and no strata- 
gem of construction can make the two harmonize. 

SPECIFICATION EIGHTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims that animal 
life was begun in a lower order of animals than now 
exist, and in the deep mazes of the past, millions of 
years before the date of the Mosaic narrative, and has 
been gradually introduced by successive completed 
creations, in completed forms, at distant and different 
epochs from each other; that these completed crea- 
tions have been swept away from some unknown 
and unexplained cause, and successively new crea- 
tions substituted in lieu thereof, till the present types 
of animals and man, named in the Mosaic account, 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 131 

were produced. The latter account, on the other 
hand, claims no such commencement, no such addi- 
tions, and no such destructions of life, but on the 
contrary states, in plain, simple, and terse language, 
that animal life was instituted on the fifth creative 
day, and man was made on the sixth. Hence, if the 
geologic faith be true in these conclusions, the Mosaic 
account is a huge fabric of deception, false in meaning, 
false in spirit, and false in directly stated facts. 

SPECIFICATION NINTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims as essential to 
the truth of its dogmas, that entire creations of plants 
and animals combined have been made and swept 
away, again and again, in order to arrange for arche- 
types of present organisms. Hence, if this was neces- 
sary to bring about existing results, it was an essential 
element in the creation ; and the failure of Moses to 
state it in his account renders it, as a whole, entirely 
untrue in meaning, and false as a perfect statement. 

SPECIFICATION TENTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims as essential to 
its truth, that natural days, and hence, diurnal motions of 
the heavenly bodies, existed millions of years before 



132 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

the date of the Mosaic account, and before the recorded 
introduction stated therein of the archetypes of the 
existing vegetable and animal kingdoms. The plain 
and unequivocal statement in Genesis is the reverse ; 
that the vegetable kingdom was made in full fruitful- 
ness and complete, the day before diurnal motions of 
this earth began, and that the animal kingdom was, in 
like manner, introduced after they began ; and hence, 
if the geologic faith be true, the Mosaic account in 
this respect is false, because of directly conflicting 
statements — false because of a conflict in every ele- 
ment respecting the dates and order of introduction 
on earth of the archetypes of these kingdoms. 

SPECIFICATION ELEVENTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith claims, as essential to 
its truth, that millions of Mosaic creative days, or 
lights, were required to fit the earth as it was on the 
sixth Mosaic day, or light. Thus, while the geologic 
faith claims an indefinite and almost an innumerable 
number of lights, the other records there were six only. 
Hence, if the geologic faith be true as to the total time 
required to make the earth and all on it, the Mosaic 
is utterly untrue and false, because of a diametrically 
opposite statement. 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 133 

SPECIFICATION TWELFTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith requires, as essential 
to its truth, the controlling element, that the sun, moon, 
and stars, evolving their attributes of greater and 
lesser lights, were in place and in motion, not only three 
days or lights before the fourth Mosaic day, or light, 
but chiliads, or an indefinite number of days or lights 
before that date. While the Mosaic account states 
distinctly and clearly, that on the fourth day " God 
made two great lights ; the greater light to rule the 
day and the lesser light to rule the night ;" and the 
object of such establishment was declared to be, "to 
divide the day from the night, and to be for signs and for 
seasons, and for dags and for years ;" and the plain philo- 
logical reading is, that here commenced the first days 
thus established, and this fact, if not stated plainly 
here, is directly so stated in the fourth commandment. 
Hence, if the geologic faith be true, in this respect, 
the Mosaic account is utterly false, and unworthy of 
consideration, as the conflicting statements are too 
plain and apparent to need comment. 

SPECIFICATION THIRTEENTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith requires, for its truth ? 
that rains had fallen during the entire period of the 



134 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

existence of a pre- Adamite world, in order to evolve the 
processes of feeding organic forms as they are now car- 
ried forward ; whereas, Scripture declares, Genesis ii. 5. 
that it had not, at the date of the Mosaic account, rained 
upon the earth. Hence, if the geologic faith be true, the 
Bible is false, because of a conflict in a direct stated fact. 

SPECIFICATION FOURTEENTH. 

In this, that the geologic faith requires, as its great 
unit, that creation was accomplished by two modes, 
that of creative fiats and development; whereas, the 
Biblical Christian faith, as a unit, claims creation to 
have been the result of fiat law. Hence, if the one 
be true, the other is false. 

It is useless further to protract these specifications of 
conflicts between the geologic faith, and the Mosaic 
account and Scriptures. We might, however, add such 
conflicts, extending to every element in the geologic as 
compared with the Mosaic. Suffice it to say, that as 
two distinct hypotheses of a creation, scientifically viewed, 
there are no two elements in common, except the in- 
troduction of man. And certainly it must have caused 
a smile to pass over the face of any reconcilist, if he 
were truly a scientific man, when he would read his 
own labored argument. 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 135 

We venture to say, there is not a scientific man in 
the land, whether he be a geologist or an anti-geologist, 
who would assert, that any two hypotheses of a crea- 
tion were the same, when elements essential to the 
two, were at variance. These elements may have the 
appearance of being the same in both, or may be 
claimed as so nearly allied, the one to those of the 
other, as to hope to make them the same ; but all such 
endeavors can not overcome a direct conflict in the 
two differing elements. 

If, then, there is one element in an hypothesis of a 
creation not found or admissible in another, the two 
hypotheses are different as a ivhole, and this principle will 
not be disputed by any man of science. Nor can we 
understand the idiosyncracies of the intellect, if it be 
true to itself, which calmly asserts the fact of the 
possibility of a reconciliation. Consequent upon the 
geologic faith of previous life to the pre- Adamite fossils, as 
we have seen, are these numerous conflicts with the 
Mosaic narrative. These conflicts will never be recon- 
ciled though they prove the groundwork of their faith. 
Then, if the geologic faith be the superior faith, on a 
fall investigation of the subject, let the geologists, with 
the aid of fossil light, reconstruct our present Bible 
for themselves, and let the Mosaic and Christian Bible 



136 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

stand as it is. For whatever may be the faith of the 
unscientific, and those who take a popular geology" for 
a guide in faith, there will yet be a numerous class, 
not only among the scientific, but the learned in the 
land, who would prefer the received Christian faith, 
based on the present Bible. 

The simple difference in faith between the two classes 
will be this, which we have stated in substance before, 
the geologist will believe that vegetable and animal life preceded 
the pre-Adamite fossils, and hence a rejection of the 
present Bible (for the Bible must be true as a whole, 
or false as a whole) ; and the other class will receive 
the Bible as it is, and will have faith that God could as 
well make a fossil a completed fiat form without a parent, 
as any other one line of existence; and hence, that 
the pre-Adamite fossils were made as they are, without 
having been preceded by " life." 

To those energetic geologists and philologists who 
wish to persuade themselves into a reconciliation of 
these two antagonistic faiths, and who, for this purpose, 
explain the Mosaic creative day as an indefinite period 
of time, embracing any number of days, nights, morn- 
ings, and evenings — we will remark, if they were 
schoolboys, and proposed in earnest to their teacher, 
that they could prove the digit one was any other nam- 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 137 

ber, or any number whatever, and any thing, we should 
think the parallel an apt one. Let them read the 
establishment of the luminaries in the fourth day, to 
make days, years, &c., and let such philologists make a 
new language, if they would wish to convey a new 
idea from the transcript. 

Nor would this simple element of arranging a mean- 
ing for the word day aid the reconcilist, since upon 
such a supposition there would be but one element in 
common between the geologic and Mosaic hypothe- 
ses — that of the introduction of man upon this planet. 
This, according to the geologic hypothesis, is the lad 
introduction of distinct creations, and such is the state- 
ment in the Mosaic account. This would simply open 
out the period for the introduction of each of the suc- 
cessive classes of work recorded to have been done in 
the Mosaic, and would not at all aid in a reconciliation 
of the introduction of successive, completed, and active 
creations of combined animal and vegetable life, and of air, 
water, and light, or any two of them. The Mosaic states 
the successive introduction of — first earth, or matter 
ivithout form and void, then light, then air and water, then 
dry land, then the vegetable kingdom in seed-bearing, then 
motions of heavenly bodies to make days, years, &c, 
then the animal kingdom, then and finally man, 



138 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

It requires no great mental exertion to see that the 
geologic faith which calls for the reverse of this order 
of introduction, or relative action, can not be reconciled to 
the Mosaic account. For combined creations with every 
element in action except man are claimed, by the geo- 
logic faith, not only to have existed, but to have passed 
away again and again, before the Mosaic-recorded crea- 
tion began. And this faith is based upon the supposi- 
tion that the pre-Adamite fossils were preceded by 
animal and vegetable life ; for these fossils are the 
only phenomena by which such conclusions are ar- 
rived at. It would then seem to be wasting words 
to show that the conflict between the two hypotheses, 
whatever may be the geologic as compared with the 
Mosaic, if not the latter in exactness, is wholly irreconcila- 
ble, whatever may be the result, and whichever the 
world may adopt as true or false. 

It then would seem evident, that to settle upon a 
faith respecting a creation (irrespective of revelation 
and the received faith), it becomes necessary for each 
hypothesis to prove its grounds, or at least so far, by 
analogical reasoning, as to show a consistency in its conclu- 
sions. Now, there are other hypotheses of a creation 
far less assailable, by analogical reasoning, than the 
present geologic, and yet not the Mosaic. The geo- 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 139 

logic fails upon its analogies, because it admits that 
every form in nature, except the fossil-mineral form, 
was created by a fiat and without a parent. This may 
be well ; but when the exception is made, those of an 
opposite faith want the argument to show why the 
creative exception was made, in this particular instance, 
as a ground for a new faith. 

It is, of course, impossible for the geologist to prove 
that the pre-Adamite fossils were preceded by either 
vegetable or animal life, and hence they can never prove 
what they denominate their science. And looking at 
the one line of truth, and not to collaterals, the pre- 
Adamite fossils may, to the eye, present no more 
proof of having been made by a creative fiat than the 
first quartz-crystal, diamond, topaz, or tree or animal, 
if the latter could have been preserved, like the for- 
mer, imperishable. And on a fair review of the collat- 
erals, on the supposition that the pre-Adamite fossils 
have all been preceded by vegetable and animal life, 
there arises a long line of impossibilities, improbabili- 
ties, violations of natural laws, diving mountains and 
dancing uplands, aimless makings and destructions, all 
teeming with Godly folly (if we call wisdom his pres- 
ent course), weakening reverence in the mind of an 
analogical reasoner for such a reputed Maker. 



140 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

We now come to charge the second, made against 
the geologic faith, as a ground for its rejection and the 

maintenance of the Biblical Christian faith. 

I 

CHARGE THE SECOND. 

That ivhile the geologic faith denies the only settled faith 
in a creation which the civilized and Christian tvorld have 
adopted, it supplies no consistent and connected hypothesis in 
lieu thereof. 

SPECIFICATION FIRST. 

In this, that each geologist has a faith of his own ; 
and there are as many specifications, or deductions 
from the assumed main faith of life having preceded 
the pre-Adamite fossil as there are geologists. Hence, 
if the assumption be true, every deduction from such 
truth should be true also, and hence the same. But as 
all geologists disagree in their deductions from the one 
assumed truth, so far as their own evidence goes, it 
proves there must be falsity in the assumed truth. 

SPECIFICATION SECOND. 

In this, that all hypotheses of a creation, or partial 
hypotheses given to the world by geologists, are in 
direct violation of natural laws, requiring states of this 
earth never known to man, and the changing of natu- 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 141 

ral laws from time to time in the various ages of their 
pre-Adamite world. 

SPECIFICATION THIRD. 

In this, that no geologist has given to the world an 
hypothesis of a creation which satisfies every phenome- 
non in Nature, and hence can not be the true hypothe- 
sis, so far as it is now partially or wholly explained. 

In respect to this charge, much might be said ; but 
for the present, we will only remark that the flat de- 
nials of the truth of the Bible by the geologic faith 
renders it an important point for us to determine, 
whether there is any more difficulty in believing that 
God made by fiat the pre-Adamite fossils (however 
strange their forms and locations) than to believe that 
this earth was once a ball of fire whirling through 
space — a state only to be dreamed of, and a condition 
of the earth or heavenly bodies entirely unknown to 
man by a precedent! — or that the granite rock was 
the natural mother and the waters the father of all 
pre-Adamite fossils, metals, and minerals. 

So far as our individual credulity can be taxed on 
this point, we must acknowledge that some pre-Adam- 
ite fossils, said to be the representation of animals, may 
at times confound us ; but we know that God did make 



142 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

the fossil at best, and hence could make by fiat law 
the archetype without life. But, so far as the ball of 
fire goes, or granite being the natural mother of all 
things, we do not know that God ever made a like ball 
of fire by any process, or constituted granite rock the 
evolving power of material forms, or that he has ever 
changed his natural laws; and hence we think it is 
more reasonable and rational to believe that he has 
made the pre-Adamite fossils as he made all other pre- 
Adamite forms, without parents, than that he has pur- 
sued the extraordinary and unknown course without a 
precedent, to make the geologic faith true. 

CHARGE THE THIRD. 

That the geologic faith being untenable, either in science or 
received Christian faith, its promulgation is vicious in its ten- 
dencies, and hurtful to the peace of mind and comfort of 
mankind. 

SPECIFICATION FIRST. 

In this, that the geologic faith strikes at the head of 
Divine revelation and the foundation of Christian faith, 
with the intended effect to overthrow both ; and hence 
intrenches the presumptive rights of many, robbing 
them of their dearest and most cherished jewels, en- 
deavoring to turn them to dross, and offering no equiv- 
alent in their stead. 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 143 



SPECIFICATION SECOND. 



In this, that the geologic faith guides the minds of 
the unscientific under the false colors of " science" (be- 
cause geology can not prove its postulate that pre- 
Adamite fossils ivere preceded by vegetable and animal 
life), by telling the apparent " truth" only, and not giv- 
ing the whole truth, that each one may judge for himself; 
thus disturbing faith, without rendering an equivalent 
or even an approximate substitute, confusing without 
setting in order, harming without redress, and finally 
leaving the mind of the seeker after truth in a chaos 
of violated natural laws, and (from a want possibly of 
early opportunities of scientific education) totally help- 
less; and, unable to guide itself through such laby- 
rinths of learning, it trusts its faith upon the reputa- 
tion mayhap of men of known scientific standing, who 
certify their conclusions as science without a word of 
scientific truth upon which to base their certificate. 

We wish to be distinctly understood as to the basis 
of our remarks respecting geology and geologists. To 
that geology and those geologists who claim for their 
new faith an independent ground from the Bible and 
Christian faith, and so publicly avow it, we have noth- 
ing to say ; for they have as good right to their faith, 



144 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

right or wrong, as the Christian has to his, until oth- 
erwise convinced. We only speak of geology in the 
abstract as untrue in science, and geologic faith as an- 
tagonistic to Bible and Christian faith. So that, if 
there are some who like geology as a speculative 
study, they have a right to such pursuit, until they 
claim for it a seat among the sciences, which are com- 
mon property to certain truth-holders, or to be Chris- 
tian faith, the specific right of another class. 

Faith in the truth of Scripture (and of necessity 
that of Genesis, the fourth commandment, and the writings 
of Moses) is the sole property of the believer. So, too, 
is the peace of mind consequent upon its maintenance, 
or loss by its disturbance, the sole and rightful proper- 
ty of the possessor. To invade this property by vaga- 
ries and falsities, to deny the truth of Scripture through 
misnamed and baseless science, to derange the peace 
of mind of those who have faith, by disturbing its foun- 
dation with false calumnies, is what in all well-regu- 
lated and equilibriated rights between man and man 
has its well-known and well-defined term. 

The slanderer who hurls his well-aimed shaft at the 
spotless character of a helpless female — inflicting a 
wound which no power on earth can heal, or restore 
the lost peace of mind either of the parent or the suf- 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 145 

ferer — commits an offence which is akin to the harm 
and wrong done to those who cherish a true faith, by 
attacks of men of known reputed true science, carrying 
that reputation upon their barbed arrows as entering- 
wedges for their shafts of geohgic false science. Nor can 
their position be any more charitably regarded than 
that of the slanderer, while they persist in the invasion 
of those sacred rights of others, until they can prove 
what they assert is the foundation-stone of their 
charges against the scriptural faith. When they can 
show that the pre-Adamite fossils ivere preceded by 
vegetable and animal life, then scientific men may 
call " a science," based upon this fact, a truthful science ; 
and its name may carry its own weight with it. But 
he who calls a supposition or an assumption like this, a 
science or a truth, is doing as much to inflict a wrong 
upon those who look at that name as truth, without be- 
ing able to prove the reverse or even the fact, is in 
every way dealing with as helpless an individual as 
the stalwart slanderer does when he attacks powerless 
innocence. 

Let the slanderer prove his charge, and his fellow- 
men will measurably forgive his indiscretion. Let the 
geologist prove his postulate of vegetable and animal 

life preceding the pre-Adamite fossils, and a much 

10 



146 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

larger apology will be found for him. Every man well 
knows that no such proof can be made ; and hence, 
what is the conclusion, so far as it affects the geologist ? 
Those w 7 ho have no reputation as scientific and Chris- 
tian men to lose, may assert, may declare, may assume, may 
argue, that the pre-Adamite fossils were preceded by 
vegetable and animal life, which they well know they can 
not prove; but to those scientific and Christian men who 
possibly kneel weekly if not daily before the shrine 
which their pre-Adamite geology stultifies, denies, and if 
succcessful completely overthroivs, they are left to the choice 
of faith in their own hearts : yet not without blame are 
they left to assert as science or truth that which they can 
not prove, or rob and plunder by means of such asser- 
tions that from those less gifted, which they can not 
restore in kind, or in any possible way rebuild the fab- 
ric which they so ruthlessly destroy. 

The earliest offence chastised for at the schoolroom, 
as most individuals are aware, is the childish falsehood. 
To such an amazing extent is this principle of truth 
instilled into the minds of the youth, that a misnomer 
is often the subject of severe chastisement there, and 
a superior repetition by the parent at home. In truth, 
it may be said that no one principle receives as much 
attention, either in the primary education or in the 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 147 

family circle as that of cultivating a reverence for 
truth, and calling things by their right names. A 
false impression may be as easily gained by a false 
name as by a long story told to convey the same idea 
as a whole. It matters not how the idea is conveyed, 
whether by signs or language, whether prolix or brief; 
the falsity consists in the wrong impression conveyed. 

What, then, may be said of the older children who 
deal in geologic assertions and general geologic terms or 
nomenclature ? For, so far as the principle of strict truth 
goes, we can not see that the older, geologic children 
should be governed by a less stringent rule on this 
cherished cardinal than the lisping schoolboy. Now, 
for an illustration, let us suppose that the boy was a 
geologist, and by dint of his research in a neighboring 
field to the schoolhouse he had seen in a rock the form 
of some portion of a fossil, which, from his knowledge 
of anatomy, he ascertained to be the tooth of the me- 
gatherium, and by his acquirements in comparative 
anatomy (this being the law by which the fossil king- 
dom is read) he could in his own fancy reconstruct 
the imaginary animal, if it had or had not lived to his 
knowledge. 

He returns to the school, collects his fellow-pupils 
around him, and in true geologic language begins to 



148 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

tell the story of what he has seen in the field a little 
over the hill, just out of sight. He expatiates upon 
the enormous size of the animal, his habits of life, his 
claw-armed toes more than two feet in length, his pon- 
derous skull, and finally finishes the scene by drawing 
the outlines of a huge monster upon the long side of 
the house, to the great fright of the young ones, who 
peep over in the direction of the supposed monster, 
and shudder lest they should see him rise up over the 
hill, to devour them in a twinkling. 

It is plain to see the hidden power which such a 
story would have upon such an audience, when the 
speaker in whom they have confidence was the narator. 
The impression upon their minds would be nothing in 
comparison if. the boy had told the truth, and nothing but 
the truth. If he had said, as was true, that he had found 
a piece of rock, which had the form of the tooth of the 
megatherium, but that no other thing w T as found in 
that place, and that some people thought that because 
this stone had been thus found, there once lived on 
earth an unknown animal which, for want of a better 
name, was called a megatherium — do you think the 
little creatures, on such a statement of facts, would 
have been shy of the spot where the schoolboy geolo- 
gist had declared the animal was ? 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 149 

But what would have been the fate of that poor 
geologic boy in those days of teaching and instilling 
of truth, and the communication of it to others, when 
it should have been announced to the teacher the 
huge deception which this boy had practised upon the 
school, frightening half of them to that extent that 
they were afraid to go to their homes alone, and the 
remainder that they would not come again without 
a parental escort ? It is plain to tell that he w T ould 
have been first beautifully u dressed down" by the 
school-teacher, and on his arrival home would have 
had the castigation probably repeated, with additions 
for telling an outrageous falsehood, and also for the 
harm done to the school in disturbing the peace of 
mind of the young pupils by false relations of what he 
claimed as truth. 

We know of no rule which would make an exception 
with the full-grown geologist, when he tells his hearers 
of oceans, mountains, upheavals, and distortions in 
nature, and talks of animals and creatures which have 
existed and passed away, on grounds no less frail than 
those of the schoolboy. 

Geologists, apparently forgetting all philological 
rules, and dealing in terms at best false in themselves, 
speak of these assertions as facts, never thinking to 



150 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

call things by their proper names. They call stones 
animals, or bones, or living creatures, or anything they 
choose ; and those who do not stop to reflect, like the 
school-children, assume the fictitious facts stated as 
truths, because of the confidence they repose in the 
speaker. 

Change the nomenclature of geology and all its 
essence is gone — hence it is plain to see in what its 
essence consists. Tell the plain, simple, naked truth, 
and nothing but the truth, and what is known as truth 
of the formations of the earth, and no one can object 
to such doctrines, or the conclusions drawn from these 
data. Let the non-geologist have a description of the 
stones found, which are claimed as animals, their size, 
shape, color, composition, location where found, the 
state in which they are found, and all such particulars, 
and let the conclusions be fairly drawn by each ob- 
server, and then let the whole truth respecting the 
probable origin of all first or pre- Adamite forms ac- 
company the description. In other words, let the 
whole truth be told, and geology will take that rank 
which truth will assign it. 

It would certainly be superfluous, in all seriousness, 
for the advocates of the scriptural Christain faith to 
admit as coincident, or even as approximately so, the 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 151 

geologic faith respecting the manner, date, and order 
of introduction of material first forms upon this 
planet, as a starting point, whereon not only to base 
a reconciliation, but as an endeavor to prove the great 
narrated truth heading divine revelation. And al- 
though many able minds have not only seriously con- 
sidered that the two might stand together on the same 
platform of truth, but have openly avowed the same 
in labored arguments; nevertheless, we think those 
positions have been taken by many who have endeav- 
ored to shield the scriptures from what they have sup- 
posed to be true science, instead of examining whether 
the so-called science itself ivas true. 

They have been led insensibly to assume the starting 
point, namely, that the pre- Adamite fossils were an 
exception in introduction of first forms, and were, in all 
instances, preceded by vegetable and animal life. 

This being assumed as true, the Bible account neces- 
sarily falls, as we have seen, by the numerous conflicts 
and contradictions in direct stated facts. 

We understand the Christian and scriptural faith to 
be founded upon the general supposition, that the 
Bible is true in its statements, and especially so in its 
recorded manner of the introduction of entities, as 
bearing directly and necessarily upon man's condition 



152 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH 

on earth, and as a proof of the power and attributes 
of the Creator. The statement, then, if true, must be 
a unit in itself, not only true as a whole, but true in 
all its statements, as parts of the whole. We need 
not apply this rule alone to statements in the Bible, 
but we can refer it to every day experience. If we 
meet with a man who tells an open falsehood, and we 
detect him in it, his credit as a man of truth is lost, 
and no matter what other statements he may make, 
they will be received with distrust. 

Let the world gain the idea that one positive untruth 
is fastened upon the divine word, and the consequence 
will be, almost universal infidelity. The scriptural 
and Christian faith demands a belief in the truth of 
revelation, not only as a whole, but in every recorded 
fact. It demands that the plain facts stated in scrip- 
ture should be received as true upon the face of the 
language used, even in allegory or parable. The 
stated facts must be true, or possible, whatever may 
be their direct or indirect application. 

So that, if the creation be spoken of as having taken 
place in six days by Moses in Genesis, and by him 
again referred to in Exodus, where he not only says 
that the heaven and the earth were made in six days, 
but all that therein is, we must assume that to be true. 



WITH SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 153 

This statement in the fourth commandment has 
been received by Jew and Gentile, by Christian and 
Israelite, as true. True as to the kind of day, as to 
the number of the days, as well as to the work done. 
If we are at liberty, as being convenient to suit our 
special creed, or particular fancy, to alter and amend the 
word six and substitute ten, one hundred, one thousand, 
or any other number, we should be equally at liberty 
to alter and amend days, and substitute years, millions 
of years, or chiliads of years, or periods of time defin 
ite or indefinite ; or, instead of saying the " Lord 
made," say the Lord did not make, and, in truth, make 
any statement, however untrue and at variance with 
the recorded word. 

It is strange how sound intellects, if honest to them 
selves, could for an instant maintain, that the days here 
named were anything but days such as the Israelites 
were enjoying, or that the number six was any other 
number than six, or that the statement that all things, 
nothing excepted, were made in these six days, were 
any other than six natural days ; or, that the geologic 
faith, which requires the total annihilation of this por- 
tion of the fourth commandment, and other portions of 
scripture, is coincident with the scriptural and Christian 
faith, which is based upon the record as it stands. 



154 CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC FAITH. 

Let the geologist be true to himself, and firm to his 
faith (if he finds ground for it), but let him be ashamed 
of that servility, which compels him to resort to mis- 
nomers, miscounting, and misstatements, to curry favor 
with any sect, or any other faith. Let him assert, and 
show his grounds for that assertion, and plant himself 
firmly on his belief, that pre-Adamite fossils were pre- 
ceded by vegetable and animal life, in direct opposition 
to the scriptural and Christian faith that they were not, 
and the geologist has a free field, and a fair start, un- 
encumbered by any other faith, to make his the shining 
light, if he can prove the foundation of his faith to be 
true, that vegetable and animal life did precede the 
pre-Adamite fossils. 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 155 



CHAPTEK VI. 

EXPUNGING THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION, AND THE 
SUBSTITUTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL, BY HUGH MILLER. 

It is generally conceded, that no man who has writ- 
ten the English language, in the present age, possessed 
that elegant control of words, and been able to com- 
bine them in such fascinating sentences, as the distin- 
guished Hugh Miller. Though he has gone from the 
theatre of action on earth, his mind's efforts are in 
active exercise throughout the land, producing a deep 
and lasting effect. 

To eulogize his style, his composition, the sweet 
simplicity of manner to his reader and his works gen- 
erally, is the spontaneous effort of every sympathizing 
mind, and should be that of every ingenuous heart. 
It should, in like manner, be the duty of every Chris- 
tian pen to denounce, in unmeasured terms, his attacks 
upon the Bible, and his frenzied attempt to blast the 
truth of the Mosaic narrative of creation, and pre- 



]56 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

sumptuously propose its elimination in substance, and 
the substitution, in lieu thereof, his particular theory. 
Such, however, is his power and control over words, 
and such his skill in their use, that while he apparently 
supports the scriptures, he, nevertheless, denounces 
them, and that, too, in a way calculated to produce 
the greatest amount of harm. His own words, when 
closely analyzed, will undoubtedly bear us out in this 
position; and whatever may have been the state of 
mind which conduced to this result — the result alone 
is what we are bound to consider, and not the cause. 

Mr. Miller's first efforts in geology were mainly 
directed toward developing the surface fossils found in 
his Scottish rambles. His " Old Ked Sandstone," and 
" Footprints," abound in beautiful and accurate descrip- 
tions of members of the fossil kingdom; and from 
the entire oneness of purpose which characterized his 
researches, we see no evidence, upon the face of the 
works themselves, which indicate that the thought of 
classifying fossils into pre-Adamite archetype forms 
and post-Adamite fossils ever occurred to him. We 
hear him, however, tell of his laying open a nodule (a 
loose rolling stone) with a single blow of the ham- 
mer, and peering at the entombed work of the Creator. 
And with a positiveness that is truly am using tp a 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 157 

candid mind, he asserts that this was the representation 
of the form of a plant, or an animal, which lived in a 
certain geologic age. " How do you know," says the 
more analogical mind, u that God did not make the 
enclosed fossil, as well as the material, or even the 
nodule, a fiat form, without a parent ?" For it is cer- 
tain he made the nodule at some time complete, and 
without a precedent, and why hot the fossil form, 
which is only one element of the existence of the 
nodule as a whole, as well ? 

" But," says Mr. Miller, " the fossils are so complete, 
so accurate, so life-like, so true to the natural forms in 
life, they must, of necessity, have patterned after life." 
Did he ever ask himself who causes and makes the 

fossil now ? And if God makes them now, and grows 

them daily, who made the beginning of all things ? 

Who made the rocks, and who makes them now ? Is 
a fossil form, per se, anything but a rock ? 

But blind to all analogical reasonings, he presses on 
the exception to all rule in common with other geolo- 
gists, that the fossil kingdom was ingrafted with par- 
ents, while all other first forms in nature started with- 
out, in a creative fiat. To a mind as needle-like as his, 
more keen than able, the glaring inconsistency which 
he displays in battling down the positions of develop- 



158 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

ment advanced by the author of the "Vestiges of 
Creation," and showing most clearly, as he does, that 
development of one form out of another was not the 
order of creative wisdom, and that every line of exist- 
ence started complete from the hand of the Creator; 
he stultifies his own labored argument, by declaring in 
his reasons, in substance, if not in words, that the fos- 
sil is an exception, and not his well-established rule. 

Mr. Miller may have been ranked with the recon- 
cilists, Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith, until the ap- 
pearance of his " Testimony of the Kocks." Here he 
throws off all restraint, if not disguise, and boldly 
asserts what other geologists substantially, but more 
tamely and cautiously, have suggested, and which all, 
in common, believe. He boldly asserts, there, that all 
things in heaven and earth were not made in six days, 
and calls upon his readers to disbelieve the Bible, 
which asserts that doctrine. He insists, too, that the 
word " day" used in the first sixth of the Mosaic narra- 
tive shall be eliminated, and the geologic term, "Azoic 
period," substituted therefor. He insists that the word 
" day" in the second sixth shall be stricken out, and 
the high-sounding geologic term, " Silurian, or Old Red 
Sandstone period," substituted therefor. For the word 
" day" in the third sixth, he proposes the substitution 



EXPUNGING SCULPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 159 

of " Carboniferous period." For the word " day" in 
the fourth sixth, he calls upon his readers to substitute 
the " Permian and Triassic period." For the fifth sixth, 
the a Oolitic and Cretaceous period." And for the last 
sixth, he proposes the " Tertiary period." 

To those candid minds which look facts in the face, 
and call things by their proper names, this is certainly 
a most startling proposition, as coming from a man 
who has such rank and standing in the world as a 
Christian and religious author. There has been no worse 
book published against the authenticity and truth of 
the Bible than his, and certainly none more destruc- 
tive, in a fascinating way, to the inquiring mind after 
truth; for, while he apparently gives credit to the wri- 
tings of Moses, and upholds them ostensibly, it is evi- 
dent that, like the skilful pugilist, he elevates the head 
of his enemy, that he may deal him more powerful and 
well-directed blows. It may be well for some geolo- 
gists to assert the reconciling and Christian biblical 
character of Hugh Miller, as an excuse for such a bold 
attempt to submerge the Bible account of creation in 
a maze of geologic names and a fog of fossil forms ; 
yet the truth is just here and nowhere else, that he 
has proposed to eliminate the Mosaic hypothesis (if 
it may be called one), and substitute therefor his own. 



160 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

It seems that this charge is well chosen and conclu- 
sively shown from his " Testimony of the Kocks ;" and 
however charitable may be his friends, or however 
Christian may be his followers, he stands there branded 
with as bold and reckless an attempt as was ever made 
by man, to overthrow the authenticity of the Bible. 
And, as we have before hinted, the cause which has 
conduced to this result is not for us to handle : that 
painful duty, if done at all, must be done by those who 
had better opportunities than transatlantic critics for 
observing his declining and last days. 

But the work itself stands as a beacon-light to geol- 
ogy and geologists, at the head of a long line of beauty 
and knowledge ; and its damaging influence is just 
equal, whatever may have been the circumstances or 
condition of mind of its most talented and distinguished 
author. It is the last thing we would do, to disturb 
the peace of mind of his friends, near or distant ; we 
are, however, not dealing with the man, but with the 
principles which he controverted. These principles 
are the imperishable rights of the world, and, in their 
defence by us, language may be used which possibly 
seems severe; but let no one mistake this language 
for the principles themselves. 

What, then, are the grounds upon which these elimi- 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 161 

nations and substitutions are urged ? Not upon the phi- 
lological construction of the language used by the in- 
spired author; not upon any grounds found within the 
record itself; not upon other inspired writings as bear- 
ing directly in explanation ; nor upon any historic or 
monumental archives : but simply upon his own read- 
ing of certain forms in Nature, which convey, by rea- 
son of certain individual proclivities, certain supposed 
truths. 

For the sake of an illustration of this ground of 
opinion, let us suppose that every tree that was ever 
made, including those which sprang from the hand of 
the Creator by a first fiat, was still upon the earth — 
having been, by some miraculous interference, pre- 
served when they had arrived at complete forms ; sup- 
pose that, in this state of things, Mr. Miller had wan- 
dered over hill and dale, to examine and determine 
which trees were and which were not pre-Adamite? 
in other words, which were the ones made by a fiat, 
and which those grown from a seed? But let us make 
the supposition a little more geological. Suppose that, 
in places, he found a peculiar kind of tree, almost uni- 
formly felled, with many others atop of it — sometimes 
more kinds, sometimes fewer kinds, and sometimes none 
— yet all perfect as when made or growing : what 

11 



162 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

would be the conclusion respecting the origin of any 
or all of them ? or could he point out a tree made by 
a fiat, or one grown from the seed? 

Mr. Miller, with his keenness of argument, would 
say, and rightly too, that the tree which lay under fell 
first (for it would be unreasonable to argue that they 
were made in that position, since it is one not of natu- 
ral growth, but of decay) ; and he might possibly, in 
like manner as in his famous story of Ci Dobbin and 
Jack," and the " top-upon-bottom order of things" in 
the ditch, determine which fell first and which last. 
But when the analogy runs into the fossil and rock 
kingdom, that top-upon-bottom argument fails, because 
the rocks and fossils are in their natural positions, and are 
found just as they grow from day to day under our own ob- 
servation. 

" But," say Mr. Miller and his geologic friends, " in 
the rock and fossil kingdoms we find twigs of trees 
only, and parts of animals — a petrified shell here, or a 
tooth there — and in every kind of rock different fos- 
silated animals and plants. Why is this V All we can 
say is, that some soils produce oats, some rye, some 
wheat; some one kind of tree, and some another; 
some climates support one kind of animal, and some 
another. We can not tell the reason why, though we 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 163 

know the fact. We know the fact, too, that the fossil 
kingdom is now going on in its formation by this frag- 
mentary rule ; and we are satisfied with this fact as it 
stands, and do not call upon the Creator or our own 
frailness for a reason. 

But because Mr. Miller was not able to master a 
reason for such (to him) a strange and deceptive 
course of the Creator, he proposes, in common with 
others, to strike out the Scriptures, and, if a Bible be 
allowed, substitute his speculations for recorded truths. 
Nor can we determine from his writings anything but 
ridicule of the idea that God ever made a fossil form 
by a fiat. He admits that fossils are made daily, as 
trees, plants, shrubs, or animals, are grown ; but denies 
the probability that fossils could have had the same 
origin in archetypes as these. Hence his faith that 
pre-Adamite fossils were all preceded by vegetable or 
animal life. Now, if Mr. Miller had pursued the course 
of a truly scientific man, he would first have found it 
necessary or convenient to prove his starting-point — the 
foundation of his would-be science ; that is, that God 
could not and did not make the pre-Adamite fossils, or 
the rocks which contain them, by a creative fiat. Nor, 
so far as we are aware, has he ever attempted the 
task ; and while the Mosaic account and all its depen- 



164 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

dencies claim all things to have been made in six days, 
it is truly amusing in one sense, and painful in another, 
to see with what careless indifference that truth is ig- 
nored by the assumption of a foundation on which to 
build his geologic framework and truly infidel struc- 
ture. 

So far as we can determine, the position of Mr. Mil- 
ler is in some respects enigmatical. It is not to be 
presumed that he so far underrated language as to 
suppose he was upholding the Mosaic narrative when 
he boldly and without the slightest reserve proposed 
the striking out and substitution to which we have 
referred ; nor that a man of his deep reading and evi- 
dent common sense could have supposed he was coin- 
ciding with Moses when he amplified upon the two 
Records, " the Mosaic" and " the Geological," and the 
"two Theologies." We may possibly explain the enig- 
ma by the curious position assumed by many geologists, 
that while cutting and carving the Scriptures to suit 
their science, they forget the fact that their assumption 
is not true science. Mr. Miller, as well as other geolo- 
gists, assert that the Scriptures can not be committed 
to error by false science, and this we believe to be 
true. Who, then, has the true science, he who can 
not, or he who can, prove his postulate — not possibly 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 165 

by tangible facts, but with such kinds of analogical 
reasoning as all logicians admit to be proof? 

What, then, the world has received for all time as 
the biblical and Christian faith in a creation is not to 
be overturned and destroyed by him who can not 
prove the first article of a new and differing faith. 

As a scientific and accurate reader, we fear Mr. Mil- 
ler's reputation must suffer when it shall be known 
that his knowledge of the Mosaic account, either in 
the original or the English translation is at best quite 
inaccurate, if not superficial. He labors through many 
pages in his " Testimony" (under the head of the two 
records, the Mosaic and the geological) to show that 
Moses did not see, what he asserts in Genesis was an 
act of the Creator about sixteen hundred years before 
he was born ; and bases his argument mainly upon ap- 
pearances, which were deceptive. We give his lan- 
guage : — 

"Let me, however, pause for a moment to remark 
the peculiar character of the language in which we are 
first introduced in the Mosaic narrative to the heav- 
enly bodies — c sun, mom, and stars. 9 The moon, though 
absolutely one of the smallest lights of our system, is 
described as secondary and subordinate to only its 
greatest light, the sun. It is the apparent, then, and 



166 EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 

not the actual, which we find in the passage — what 
seemed to be, not what ivas ; and as it was merely what 
appeared to be greatest that was described to be great- 
est, on what grounds are we to hold that it may not 
also have been what appealed at the time to be made, 
that has been described as made ? The sun, moon, and 
stars, may have been created long before, though it zvas not till 
this fourth period of creation that they became visible from the 
earth's surface." 

This is his main ground respecting " appearances in 
Mosaic vision," given to deny the record in another fact 
as to the fourth day's work. If our distinguished au- 
thor, who deals such heavy blows against the air, had 
informed himself, he would have discovered that the 
sun and moon are not even named either in the origi- 
nal or in the English Genesis. If they had been named, 
as stated by Mr. Miller, and in the place stated, the 
Mosaic account would have been akin to his own frail 
science. The words are, " greater and lesser luminary!' 
For, as has been shown, the greater light or luminary 
is the combined light of the sun and all other heavenly 
bodies to rule the day ; and the lesser luminary was 
the combined light of the moon (when visible) and the 
starlight. It would be as true as geological science, to 
insert in the accurate Mosaic narrative, as Mr. Miller 



EXPUNGING SCRIPTURE BY HUGH MILLER. 1G7 

has done, the overshadowing error of " sun and moon," 
for the "greater and lesser luminary." 

We will leave Mr. Miller and his reasonings, how- 
ever, to the tender mercy of his admiring friends; 
and, notwithstanding his terrible scientific and biblical 
mistakes, he was the most elegant and impressive geo- 
logic writer of the nineteenth century. 



168 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

There is no greater mystery, and when viewed in 
the proper light no more mystery, surrounding the 
existence of the fossil kingdom, in its multiform and 
fragmentary lines, than there is in any other kingdom 
to which we assign a more direct cause for its forma- 
tion and usefulness. To our limited appreciation there 
may be more reason in the bearings and uses of the 
members of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, be- 
cause we can see a more direct necessity which each 
has to the whole. There is a mutual dependency, in 
one sense, between the one and the other. The ani- 
mal may not exist without the animal or the plant on 
which it subsists, while yet there is another and 
equally important dependence of both upon the strict- 
ly mineral. 

While this dependence is admited by all, the man- 
ner in which it becomes manifest to us is not so plain. 



FORMS IN 'THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 169 

The animal does not subsist on the plant proper, or 
the mineral proper ; nor does the vegetable consume 
the mineral proper. The plant must be a completed 
form, minus its vitality, before it can administer to the 
growth of the animal. In like manner, the animal must 
be a completed form (in any assumed stage of com- 
pleteness), minus its vitality, before it can be useful to 
any other animal for food to produce growth, or support 
life when grown. This is apparent without further il- 
lustration, and from which we deduce the following : — 
That however, or from ivhatever source in nature the mate- 
rial he draivn which makes up an entity, or completed result or 
form, that result is an independent form in the great catalogue 

of LINES OF EXISTENCES. 

It matters not what were its antecedents, or what its 
parentage, or from what kingdoms it has drawn its 
food, the result, when complete or partial, is a distinct 
and independent form, and takes rank as one of the 
great warp-threads of creation. Its size, its apparent 
use, or its importance to us, is of no account in esti- 
mating reasons with Him who made all things. The 
blade of grass which struggles for a scanty existence 
on some barren heath, or the towering pine which 
overlooks the forest — the scarcely visible insect which 
feeds upon the apparently useless dust floating in the 



170 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

air, or " the rich man clothed in purple and fine 
linen, faring sumptuously every day" — the tiny pebble 
which rolls its life away on some deserted coast, or the 
proud rock-bound mountain of the tropics which rears 
its head beyond the drifting snows, are each and all 
of no less importance, as independent existences,- than 
is the Creator's etching on some slate rock, or a com- 
plete petrifaction, so called, of some huge, and to us, 
unknown form of animal or plant. 

All analogy in reasoning as to a creation fails, when 
one line of existence, or one completed result in nature, 
has a different origin assigned to it over any other, and 
hence it becomes vital to show what is, and what is 
not, a completed form, or, we might say, an independ- 
ent form in Nature. We define it to be, that resulting 
form ivhich has obtained an existence by the operation of the 
active laws of nature. 

Thus we say a tree, or plant, or animal, is a com- 
pleted result in any stage of its existence, while the 
elements which compose either are not, because they ivill 
not independently grow and exist. The thigh bone of a 
man may be an element in the completed result, 
though we well know such an element can not grow, 
or be made by any process in nature independent of 
the man himself. Neither can the bark or leaf of a 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 171 

tree grow independent of the tree. In like manner, 
in the strickly mineral kingdom, the variety of crystal- 
line forms show how many distinct results are found in 
that department in nature. Each particular crystalline 
form is a result of an active law in nature to produce 
that result, and if the result be repeated, it will again 
form after the pattern of the first of its kind. 

So tyrannical and unvarying is the rule of repeating 
forms in the crystalline kingdom, that corresponding 
angles bounding the faces of the same kind of crystals 
are identical. They also grow, by the mysterious con- 
nection of particles of matter with each other, and 
form, by the same rules, to become completed results, 
as do plants and animals, though by different natural 
laws. 

The question, then, which becomes of interest to us 
is, are the forms in the fossil kingdom completed and inde- 
pendent results, and are they governed by the same laws in 
forming as are all other independent results in nature ? 

On the solution of this question, we think, mainly 
depends the existence or annihilation of all argument 
as to the condition of pre-Adamite fossils. For if it 
can be shown that fossils, per se, are all of them, both 
fragmentary and otherwise, independent results, and that 
all independents results are steps in lines of existences 



172 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

which started from the hand of the Creator by a fiat, 
we show that the pre-Adamite fossils are bound by the 
same rule, and hence were not preceded by animal or vege- 
table life. 

So far as this discussion goes fossils are of two kinds, 
pre-Adamite or post- Adamite. 

The geologic faith, on the other hand, claims no 
distinction in origin of pre-Adamite and post-Adamite 
fossils. They claim that a fossil can not be the subject 
of a creative fiat, because they see the fossil is now 
the result of a previous existence of a plant or animal, 
after which it fashions itself in form, but not in sub- 
stance, and hence, that all fossils must have followed 
the same rule. When, then, you ask a geologist, " Does 
not man grow like the fossil, and the fossil like the 
tree in analogy of natural law ?" — they can not but 
say yes; but, say they, the fossil is more intimately 
connected with the plant or animal, than the man or 
tree with their parents. 

The trouble, we think, which the geologist has in 
reading correctly the nature of the fossil kingdom, has 
been that he has mistaken the fragmentary fossils, and 
even the fossils themselves, as elements in the existence 
of vegetable and animal life, instead of regarding them 
as completed, independent results, and as forming, in 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 173 

themselves, a kingdom quite as independent as those 
from which they take their form (vegetable and ani- 
mal), and their substance (mineral). 

A parallel to the fossil kingdom can be found in the 
kingdom of shadows. According to geologic reason- 
ing, the principle of the shadow must have been of 
subsequent establishment to that of the object which 
casts it. This would be unquestionably an error. 

We know it is difficult for minds, without much 
reflection, to apprehend readily how the shadow, as a 
principle of fiat law, and the thing which casts a 
shadow now, must not always have been inseparably 
connected. It must, too, be admitted, that the exact 
shadow of a man was not made before the man him- 
self, though shadows, as types of a line of existence, 
undoubtedly were. Hence all we can determine as to 
the date and principle regarding the introduction of 
shadow as a line, must be as to the fact, and not the 
form of the shadow made as an archetype. 

The first man made in the sunlight on the sixth 
day, cast his shadow the moment he was brought into 
full life. But he would not have cast that shadow, if 
the light had not been divided from the darkness on the 
first day, and the law thus been manifested in type. 

In like manner, the archetypes of the fossil kingdom 



174 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

were made on the third day, when the rock formations 
were completed, not, possibly, in exactmss of subse- 
quent plant and animal form, but in kind, form, and 
extent, sufficient to meet the requirements of the law 
of petrifaction then established .in its great variety. 
Neither the plant or the animal had yet been made ; 
still, when the plants and animals were made, they 
were met in nature by the law of petrifaction, ready, 
as in the case of the shadow, to go forward and pro- 
duce a fossil kingdom in fragmentary and completed 
forms, which we have denominated the post-Adamite 
fossils; while those from which they formed in type 
were pre-Adamite archetypes. 

The reader must then understand, that a fossil is 
neither the plant or the animal of which it is claimed 
that it retains the form ; neither is it an element of 
either, or has it any connection, per se, with either. 
All that man knows respecting the fossil is, that it is 
the child of two kingdoms, the one giving it form, the 
other food, and it does not affect the principle of its 
advent on earth, or its existence as an independent 
entity, whether it takes form from the vegetable or 
animal kingdom, or its substance from the metallic or 
non-metallic mineral kingdom. 

It is the child of two parents, as clearly and as un- 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 175 

equivocally as is any human being, or any animal 
existence. And as the law of reproduction varies in 
every kingdom, so does the law of the production of 
the fossil vary from that of any known kingdom. 
There are analogies, most certainly, between the for- 
mation of crystalline masses, and those masses formed 
into fossils, by the aid of quite a different parent. 
But scan the matter closely, and it will be seen that 
every form in every kingdom has a peculiar law by 
which its parents give it not only form but substance. 

Let us examine, then, by what processes the fossil is 
made or brought into existence. To those who may 
not be familiar with either the nature or composition 
of fossils, it is a common idea that they are what geol- 
ogists call them — plants, trees, animals, or parts of them. 
This is not so. A fossil is a stone so called, or a collec- 
tion of metallic or non-metallic mineral crystals or 
amorphous masses of limestone in the shape of a plant 
or animal, or parts of them, or an imprint upon some 
rock. 

How, then, are they produced, formed, or brought 
into existence ? for it matters not by what term you 
denominate the fact. This depends upon two condi- 
tions, in the absence of either of which the fossil can 
not be had : — 



176 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

First. The condition of certain peculiar matter, once 
either animal, vegetable, or mineral. 

Second. The presence of the fossilizing vitality and 
food, or mineral matter, of the proper kind to make the 
fossil grow. 

We may possibly be censured for asserting that fos- 
sils have vitality. Is there any complete result in Na- 
ture that has not its vitality ? The tree, the animal, the 
crystal, the rock, have all a vitality, so long as they 
exist as completed results. Destroy that vitality by 
fire, or cause death by other means, and the tree, the 
animal, the crystal, the rock, all crumble to their ele- 
ments, each of which elements has its special vitality 
as such, and can not be destroved. 

These vitalities are of different natures, and are as 
various as the kingdoms to which they belong ; never- 
theless, these vitalities are as essential to the making 
and retention of intact forms in Nature as that of 
the matter which composes them. It is, therefore, as 
would seem, a fact which can not be denied, that fos- 
sils have their peculiar vitality, as well as any other 
forms in Nature, because you can destroy them by heat 
or chemical action, and the fossils crumble back to 
their elements. 

Fossilization, except imprints, is simply petrifaction, 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 177 

and would seem to apply as well to the making of fos- 
sils as to the formation of rocks. We will, therefore, 
first treat of the fossils which are petrifactions, leaving 
the subject of imprint fossils for after-consideration. 
To produce the petrifaction termed u the fossil," as we 
have seen, two conditions are necessary — the sub- 
stance to give form, and the vitality, where petrifaction 
will ensue, and the resulting form will be that of the 
substance which was in a condition to take on the pet- 
rifying vitality. But if the form was a collection of 
other substances (then vegetable or animal), which 
would take up the petrifying vitality, then the result- 
ing form would not be a fossil, but it would be a stone ; 
not in the form of either a plant or an animal, except 
it would chance to be so, which is by no means proba- 
ble, though such might be the case. 

i 

Hence, we perceive that it is not the amount or form 

of the matter which may take on the petrifying vital- 
ity, but the condition in which the vitality may be 
able to meet the matter. It is plain, then, that the 
petrifying principle must have been coeval with the 
rocks on their very first manifestation in completed 
forms under a petrifying law ; the petrifying principle 
being in the debris of plant and animal life, and in the 

rocks proper, manifested in three different ways. It is, 

12 



178 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

then, evident, in all sound reasoning, that if this prin- 
ciple was coeval with the archetype rocks, and was so 
made operative in a fiat, there can be no valid reason 
advanced to show that in the other two modes of man- 
ifestation — namely, in the vegetable and animal fossil 
forms — they- should have a different origin. 

Now, we say that the archetype fossil-plant forms 
and the archetype fossil-animal forms have no more 
connection with the plants and animals themselves 
than any other offspring has with the archetype parents 
which have produced a line of existence ; and hence, 
like all other things, were ushered into place in com- 
pleted forms by a creative fiat without parents. For, not 
only the fragmentary but the completed fossils, both 
of plants and animals, are independent existences, pos- 
sessed of vitality and substance, but, like all other 
things, perform their special duty in the great scale of 
creation. 

To show this,. let us suppose we were examining the 
petrified tooth of a shark. When we look at the ani- 
mal in life, we find that one element making up the 
ereature is a tooth ; and we discover a similar tooth 
petrified. Now, the geologist can discern no differ- 
ence between the two lines of existence — the tooth in 
the shark's head, and the petrifaction. But the anti- 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 179 

geologist asks the question, "Was this petrifaction 
formed in such a depth of rock as to preclude the possi- 
bility that it is a post-Adamite fossil ?" And, if answered 
in the affirmative, he then assigns his belief that it was 
a pre-Adamite fossil shark's tooth, and was a member 
of that kingdom which was formed by a fiat without a 
parent. Why ? Because it is a completed existence, 
and is not an element of a living shark. The shark's 
tooth can not grow independent of the shark, while the 
fossil can. Now, we have no difficulty in admitting 
that the shark and his teeth were made by fiat; yet 
another form, in another kingdom of an entirely differ- 
ing composition, could not have been made in the same 
way, because they correspond in form. 

Upon that principle, there should not have been but 
one sharks tooth made, as an archetype ; since, if there 
was, it must have been of a shark reproduced from its 
parent. The argument, if it has any weight, precludes 
the idea of such archetype forms having been made ; 
and it narrows down creation still further to suppose 
that these lines of existences, having similar forms and 
totally differing compositions, could have been made 
by the Creative Wisdom in archetypes ! 

As further ground for separating the two lines of 
existences from each other, we would remark that 



180 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

they spring from different parents, are governed in 
their formation by different laws, are fed by different 
food, are sustained by different affinities, have different 
offices (whatever they may be) to perform; and, while 
the one is naturally perishable, the other is naturally 
imperishable. 

Thus we have shown, and it is believed conclusively, 
that the fossils, although indebted on the one side to 
vegetable and animal matter after it has lost its vitality, 
and on the other to the mineral kingdom for their 
birth and formation, there is a fossil vitality which con- 
trols them in their peculiar kingdom, constituting them 
independent forms with life differing from that of either 
parent. It matters not by what peculiar law of par- 
entage a given independent line of existence is repro- 
duced, no such line can be engrafted upon creation 
without admitting at once the development theory of 
the " Yestiges of Creation," so forcibly and ably con- 
troverted by the distinguished Hugh Miller. Each 
and every such independent line must start without 
parents, as did man, the animal, the plant, the vegeta- 
ble, or the crystal. 

Nor can we see by what plausible idiosyncrasy the 
analogical mind can arrive at any other conclusion, 
when that mind admits the creative fiat to have start- 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 181 

ed the vegetable, animal, and crystalline kingdoms in 
all their members. We know the fossil has parents now, 
and we can produce them, as we can produce those of 
the plant, breed the animal, or form the crystal. 

As we can not determine how many of any given 
kind of tree were made as archetypes, n<# how many 
plants, nor how many animals, so too we are unable to 
tell how many fossils, or in fact what kind of fossils, 
were made as archetypes. Nor is it probable that it 
was intended that man should know the length and 
breadth of the hidden mysteries which surround these 
peculiar forms, or be able to discern those which were 
archetypes from those which are reproduced forms. 

This naturally brings us down to the classification 
of fossils, which certainly seems to be that one adopted 
by all — the pre-Adamite and post-Adamite ; but as to 
which are and which are not pre-Adamite, it is impos- 
sible for the biblical Christian to agree with the geolo- 
gist. It is undoubtedly true that very many fossils 
attributed to parent plants and animals as having lived 
in the pre-Adamite periods of time, are from plants and 
animals of the Mosaic narrative ; and, although they 
are said to be extinct, they may be yet living on por- 
tions of the dry land or in waters entirely unexplored 
by man. 



182 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

There are others, too, which were of the Mosaic cre- 
ation, and have lived on the earth since, and have prob- 
ably become extinct. From these thoughts two propo- 
sitions emanate : — 

First. The geologist can not show to the contrary, 
and there is* probability in the supposition, that the 
pre-Adamite fossils are the archetypes of the Mosaic cre- 
ation ; and, if the plants and animals are not found on 
the earth now, they have passed away in a natural or 
cataclysmic decadence : and thus that order is marked 
in the upward fossiliferous series of the rock-formations 
as the plants and animals have been eliminated from 
existence from time to time. 

Second. No geologist, of his own knowledge, can as- 
sert that the plant or animal parent of any particular 
fossil which he may select, no matter what or which, is 
not now in growth and existence somewhere upon the 
earth ! 

As a corollary to these propositions, there follows 
this, that no geologist can say what fossils are and 
what fossils are not exclusively contained in any given 
rock-formation. So far as his knowledge goes, there 
may be every species of fossil, yet found, discovered in 
each and every of his so-called geologic periods. 

We now speak of knowledge as the basis of what 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 183 

geologists denominate science. We admit that there is 
far more probability in the idea that the fossiliferous 
range upward in the rock-formations are archetypes 
and records of the Mosaic creation ; and that the his- 
tory there related is the true history of the order in 
which these various lines of existence have passed 
away in point of time, if they have so passed away, 
than that every geologic period contains the entire 
range of fossiliferous entities. In this view of the fos- 
sil kingdom, a positive utility is discernible ; while in 
the chance placement of fossils here and there — the 
result of aimless distruction of all living things, ac- 
cording to geologic periods — nothing but mysterious- 
ness can be deduced. It should be the first aim of any 
reasonable, rational creature, who reveres his Maker, 
when he attempts to translate the secret signs in Na- 
ture, to give that coloring to God's acts which tends to 
show the greatest amount of wisdom and the least ap- 
pearance of folly. If, then, the geologist be not hope- 
lessly engulfed in his theories, he will pursue this 
course when his eyes are open to the truth. He will 
not translate that to the condemnation in folly of his 
Creator which can be turned to wisdom. He will ra- 
ther yield some of his cherished principles, and look at 
things as they are, and read them accordingly. 



184 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

While we have the fossil forms under consideration, 
we are bound to meet in some place, and it may be 
done here as w T ell as elsewhere, a stronghold of the 
geologists, and one which Mr. Hugh Miller handles 
with such amazing strength and force — the fossil cor- 
prolite. Mr. Miller remarks on this head, that " geolo- 
gists find not unfrequently among their fossils, the dung 
[corprolite] of the carniferous vertebrates charged in 
many instances with the teeth, bones, and scales, of the 
creatures on which they had preyed, and strongly im- 
pressed in at least the corprolites of the larger Palaeo- 
zoic ganoids of the enalosaurus of the secondary pe- 
riod, by the screw-like markings of a spiral intestine 
similar in form to that now exemplified by sharks and 
rays." And he then goes on in a triumphant strain 
of argument that, in his own mind, apparently settles 
the question. 

There is just one inquiry to be made about any 
petrified corprolite. Do like corprolites now petrify 
by existing laws of Nature? If so, what are its 
parents ? Mr. Miller says the parent on one side 
are the larger ganoids of the Palaeozoic and existing 
sharks and rays, with rifle-bored embrasures; and ive 
say, upon the other, the vitality of petrifaction, which, 
acting in connection, produces the independent result 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 185 

so triumphantly elaborated by himself, and referred to 
by other geologists. As an independent member of 
the fossil kingdom, it typifies a separate line of 
existence, and is as much entitled to its archetype as 
the parent on either side. 

It is believed that most geologists would grant, that 
the ganoid, although possibly the child of a pre-existing 
ganoid, spontaneously suggests the idea of an arche- 
type ganoid at some time without parents. So, too, 
the corprolite unpetrified, should not have its archetype 
because it is an active element of the living ganoid ; 
but when that element assumes, by virtue of new 
parentage, an entirely new substance, it is no longer the 
first element, but a new, completed, independent result, 
which, like any and every other natural form, should 
be entitled to be ranked as separate lines of existences, 
and hence must, in all analogy, have had its archetype 
form. 

But the startling point of triumph conceived to be 
secured by Mr. Miller, and copied extensively by other 
geologists, is not so much in the elaboration and skil- 
ful handling of the corprolite itself, as in the unfolding 
its internal structure, and displaying it, element by 
element, as conclusive proof of its origin. And we 
would remark, that here is the stumbling-block of the 



186 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

geologist, he makes no distinction between an element 
in one result, and that element when it takes on a new 
composition, and becomes itself another and completed 
result. He claims, and undoubtedly claims truly, that 
the corprolite is a charged in many instances with the 
teeth, bones, and scales of the creatures on which they 
have preyed." We use his language, but must correct 
his meaning, since the language, as it stands, conveys 
a false impression. The unpetrified corprolite may 
contain a teeth, bones, and scales of the creatures on 
which they have preyed," but the petrified corprolite, 
if it be an archetype, contains no such things ; it may 
contain petrifactions in these forms, and, if the corpro- 
lite be a petrifaction post-Adamite, following its pre- 
Adamite type, then these teeth, bones, and scales were 
once elements of living entities, which have lost their 
places as elements of an old, and become, in form and 
composition, elements of a new, organism. 

The perfection of fossils is urged by geologist to 
disprove their archetype origin. So nearly, say they, 
do they resemble the living forms, that no human skill 
could imitate their correctness. We can not see the 
force of the argument, as disproving their archetype 
origin, for, instead of its being an adverse, it is a coin- 
cident proof. For it is scarcely possible that the ele- 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 187 

ments would more cautiously and carefully preserve 
the matter to be petrified, and do the work better than 
He who first moulded them as patterns for the mani- 
festation and subsequent action of the law. 

We pass, now, from the complete and positive petri- 
faction to a more difficult subject, the semi or par- 
tial petrifactions, where the matter was undergoing 
the process, and from some cause has been arrested, 
leaving the petrified and the unpetrified substances in 
connection. It is from this class of fossils that geology 
draws most of its strength, and by a skilful confusion 
of these with the completed fossils, both archetypes 
and types, all are ranked upon the same footing as to 
origin. So little of analysis and generalization is there 
in the mass of the human mind, that a geologist has 
but to present to an audience a half-formed fossil, 
where the bone, or shell, or fibre of wood is visible, 
and the fossilizing process attached in the same speci- 
men, and the conclusion, in such minds, is irresistible, 
without explanation, that all fossils have been formed 
in the same way. Present to that same audience an 
increasing and growing plant, and without previous 
education, the conclusion would be, that all plants 
grew in the same manner, till reflection would show 
them that there must, of necessity, have been a first 



188 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

one, and that first one could not have made itself, but 
was made complete by the same power which causes 
its repetition. 

It is only by the analysis of principles that such 
reasonings respecting fiat forms are established, pro- 
vided we can not draw a direct parallel in nature. 
But when analogical reasoning is certified to by a 
familiar example, the reasoning becomes a demonstra- 
tion. If, then, we show an example where one form 
in nature is so far changed as to loose its identity (and 
by a hidden law quite as inexplicable as the making 
of fossil forms, from once living ones), then this grows 
into another distinct passive existence, and from that 
developes into an active and living existence, we show 
a direct parallel to the birth of the fossil, and its inde- 
pendent state. 

We refer to the familiar history of the zoological 
order, lepidoptera, or butterflies and moths, where 
parentage produces a different species of existence 
from itself, and where the intermediate matter or form 
has no attribute of its parent ; and this latter form, as 
a parent of another, has no attribute of its offspring. 
We give this illustration in this place to show, that as 
the chrysalis is a completed and independent form in 
nature, it must have had its archetype in the primitive 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 189 

creation, as well as the catapillar, which is its parent ; 
and the catapillar, in like manner, owes its parentage 
to the lepidoptera. So that, in truth, the butterfly 
does not reproduce itself, nor does the fossil reproduce 
itself; but the butterfly, from its larva, produces an 
independent and totally different form, while the ani- 
mal not only reproduces itself, but does, in addition, 
just what the butterfly does in another way, produces 
the fossil, an entirely different and independent thing. 

Now if the catapillar be not an independent form in 
nature, what is ? and if it had not its archetype in the 
primitive creation, what had ? We do not intend to 
be understood as basing the main argument upon this 
simple illustration, for there may be those who will 
deny that the catapillar is anything more than the 
young butterfly making its way to maturity. We 
think, however, the position is sound, because offspring 
generally resemble parental forms, and are of the same 
general natures, whereas the catapillar, the chrysalis, 
and the butterfly bear no analogy to each other. Nor 
can the chrysalis be ranked as an ova, for then it would 
be an element of the butterfly, and would be barred 
from the distinction of an independent^ existence, and 
grown to maturity as such. 

There is another curious instance in the crystalline 



190 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

kingdom, where masses of crystals are combined almost 
nightly, at certain seasons of the year, in the very fan- 
ciful forms of plant-leaves of an endless variety. We 
refer to frost-marks upon glass windows, but particu- 
larly to those more extensive and perfect ones seen 
upon flag-stone pavements. They are, when formed, 
in principle analogous to the fossil ; that is, the crys- 
tals composing its mass, although different, are ar- 
ranged in precisely the form of a fossil. But this pe- 
culiar line of existence neither has the composition of 
a fossil nor has it the same parentage, and hence is 
not properly a fossil. Though not a fossil, it is, never- 
theless, so nearly analogous that it assumes similar 
forms and similar crystalline composition, and is as 
mysterious in its formation and uses as the fossil itself. 
The frost-mark kingdom, in its variety of forms, is no 
less determined as a kingdom than the range of fossil 
forms. Nor is it less determined than the plant forms, 
which are the parents to portions of the fossil king- 
dom ; for the frost-marks upon mud can be the parent 
of a fossil form. 

We only adduce these lines of existences of frost-marks, 
fleeting at times as they are, to show a pervading mys- 
tery in forms in nature, and that even certain crystal- 
line forms make of themselves, either with or without an 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 191 

apparent parent. If a leaf be moistened and laid upon 
a frosted glass, the imprint is left in a frost-mark. We 
at once say the cause is apparent. But if that same 
or a similar mark is made while we sleep, we say 
the cause is a mystery. Why ? Simply because 
we are in the habit of looking to causes to produce 
effects. We know by experience that the moistened 
leaf and the law of congelation of water are the pa- 
rents of a frost-mark made in the manner specified, 
and we count with certainty for the result. But we 
can not tell what the parent on the one side of the 
frost-mark is, which forms of itself, though we do know 
the parent on the other side, the law of crystallization 
of water. The two fossil f rod-marks, the one made by a 
moistened leaf, and the frost-leaf made without it, may 
not be identical in form; nevertheless, to a casual 
observer who did not know the parents, both would be 
attributed to the same general cause. And the geol- 
ogist himself, if brought upon the stand, would testify 
that they were mysterious forms made by the opera- 
tion of natural laws ; and although in form they were 
generally analogous to living plant-leaves, no plant life pre- 
ceded their formation ! 

The analogy between the frost-print kingdom and 
the fossil kingdom may not be readily admitted ; but 



192 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

we can see no difference whatever in principle, and for 
the reason that the frost-mark or leaf is a completed 
result in Nature, and no reason can be assigned, ab- 
stractly, for its spontaneous appearance, which can not 
be a conclusive reason why God could make in like 
manner the fossil a complete form, without an apparent 
parent as well. Or even go further — that he can in 
like manner make them now, or could at any other 
time, without vitiating his mode of creation. The illus- 
tration goes to show that forms in Nature, both as to 
their origin, or archetypes, and their reproduction, are 
somewhat beyond the reach of knowledge in man, and 
that the fossil and frost-print kingdoms, which are alike 
puzzles in themselves, are not to be read as science by 
any pretender. He may have his belief, or his faith, 
as to the origin of such forms, or the motive which 
guided the creative fiat, or guides the creative con- 
trol ; but that man places little value on a scientific 
reputation who certifies such unknown and indeter- 
minable results as science of the nineteenth century. 

And here the reader must allow us to call attention 
to what in this connection is, and what is not, science. 
To endeavor by chemical or philosophical knowledge 
to determine the particular law in Nature which oper- 
ates in developing these forms, their composition, or 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 193 

the affinities which cause them to exist, is what is true 
science if the result be correct. But to endeavor to 
show the origin of these forms, either in a creative 
fiat or by a process of development, is bringing science 
to determine a result which every man knows can not 
be done ; it must be simply a faith ; and he who as- 
serts those things to be science which belong to the 
region of the unknown, simply makes for himself an 
immortal niche in the vast vault of speculative phi- 
losophy, which the stern realites of true Science in 
known things is making more and more apparent 
and appreciable as she makes her onward strides in 
imperishable truth. 

But to return to the semi-petrifaction. The ge- 
ologist will be compelled to establish two points 
respecting such an entity, before it can have- any 
weight in his argument, to establish his faith that 
pre-Adamite fossils were preceded by vegetable and 
animal life : — 

First. That the bone or fibre of wood making part 
of the fossil is bone or wood — that is, that they are 
chemically of identical composition ; and — 

Second. That these semi-fossils were pre-Adamite. 

It is most confidently asserted that no fossil which is 
six thousand years old could, in the decadences of na- 



194 FORMS IX THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

ture to which it must in that time have been exposed, 
* contains either bone or wood in the state in which 
they existed in the animal or plant. That there are 
appearances in the fossil which resemble bone or wood 
is not denied ; but that real bone or wood exists in 
any fossil which can be shown to be six thousand 
years old, is denied upon all well-established laws in 
physical philosophy and chemistry. The Creator has 
made the perishable, perishable in the operation of 
his natural laws. The perishable is not in Nature 
imperishable, without the aid of man to make it 
measurably so. 

If the geologist, however, can show that the semi- 
fossil was a pre- Adamite form, it would go some dis- 
tance as a make-weight in his theory. But even that 
proof might not be conclusive evidence that this 
compound, or semi-fossil, did not have its archetypes 
fashioned by the creative-fiat law. This question is 
not so clear as the one respecting the pure fossil. It 
is self-evident, however, that no such proof can be ad- 
duced ; and, until it is, there is no occasion to prove 
the contrary. And to use the heavy and conclusive 
argument of our distinguished geologist, Mr. Miller, we 
settle the question respecting the semi-fossils by say- 
ing that the hypothesis that they are pre-Adamite is 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 195 

the geologist's, and not the anti-geologist's, and the 
proof lies with the former. 

The strongest argument of geologists to support 
their faith is derived mainly from two grounds : — 

First That they find in one great division, or pe- 
riod (as they denominate certain conventional divis- 
ions), different fossil forms from those in another; 
and — 

Second. They find a succession upward, beginning 
with the lower orders of animals, and ascending to the 
higher. 

Admitting, for the moment, that their positions be 
true (and, as far as our knowledge goes, they have 
been true, at least six months at a time, during the 
popularity of geology), candidly considered as a whole, 
what does it show, if the pre-Adamite fossils were not 
preceded by vegetable and animal life ? It manifests 
no more reason in itself (except, possibly, as we have 
remarked before, to show the order in which some 
lines of existences, which were Mosaic, have since 
become extinct, if that be true), than it is an an- 
swer to the abstract question, why they were made 
at all ? 

The reason why the Creator has disseminated the 
fossil kingdom in the rock formations in the order in 



196 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

which we find them, can no sooner be answered than 
the question, why one rock is found in America, another 
in Europe, another in Asia ? or jewels in one part of 
the world and not in another? or gold in California 
and the Siberian mountains ? or why one soil will pro- 
duce wheat, another corn, or any other peculiar cereal ? 
or that coal is found in one place, and is not a universal* 
element? The entire range of questions as to place- 
ment of entities, both living and fossil, is involved in 
the unknown, and he who can give a certain reason for 
any such mysterious placement, can tell why one kind 
of rock is honored with a peculiar fossil, or why, pos- 
sibly, the fossil was put in them at all. 

But the a top-upon-bottom" argument of our distin- 
guished scientific fossil historian, Hugh Miller, is the 
superficial fly-trap which entrances the "yellow-cov- 
ered" reader in science. 

If, however, he had resolved his argument into a 
truthful analogy, and asked his reader to have accom- 
panied him while he related the story, how man was in- 
troduced upon earth, what was made of him first, what 
last, on the " top-upon-bottom" philosophy, and the 
time consumed by the completion of his stately form, 
judged of by the time it now takes to do the same 
thing, he would have done much to illustrate his own 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 197 

knowledge upon the subject-matter in hand, and which 
he denominates his science. 

The analogical reader might then ask his instructor, 
" on what ground do you separate the entities of the 
sixth day, your i tertiary period', from each other, and 
say this was, and this was not, a creative fiat ? If your 
" top-upon-bottom" philosophy be true at all, why is it 
not true when applied to man ? to plant ? or to animal ? 
and if man was made in the tertiary 'period, how much 
of that period was consumed in his making? Did 
the marrow of his system stand forth as a completed 
work ? were the layers of his bones, and muscles, and 
flesh, and, finally, skin, arranged in the order of the 
" top-upon-bottom" science ? and the time consumed in 
their making, judged of by the time it takes to per- 
form the like operations now ? 

Such questions propound their own answers, and 
the great school of philosophy which can not be 
denominated by a better name, than the geological 
owes all its strength, and all its fallacious conclusions 
to this "top-upon-bottom" argument, and, as a whole, 
resolves itself into one question, why has the Creator 
put one thing in nature on- or over another ? Till this 
question is answered and satisfactorily proved, geology 
will never have as much as a starting point in science. 



198 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

There is another element which the geologic faith 
claims, of importance in establishing a succession of 
creations, indicated in the rock formations. They 
claim to find fossils in one class of rocks, which they 
do not find in others, and of these fossils, possibly, 
some do, and some do not, correspond with forms in 
life which they represent. 

In the " Encyclopedia Britannica," vol. xv., p. 184, 
will be found the following statement respecting the 
fossil kingdom, which has the appearance of the off- 
spring of a candid mind, and may be considered a fair 
exponent of the geologic theory on this point : — 

" Of many thousand species of marine zoophta — 
mollucs, Crustacea, fishes, &c, very few can be exactly 
paralleled in the system of living nature, most of them 
are extinct, and only to be understood by the applica- 
tion of laws derived from the study of the most similar 
existing race. The amount of resemblance between 
the fossil and the recent tribes is extremely variable : 
a few are perfectly identical ; a considerable portion so 
far similar as to be referred to the same genera ; a still 
greater portion can be included in the same great 
families ; almost all can be referred to the same great 
classes, the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The dif- 
ferences of form and structure are thus known to be 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 199 

of the same order as those which, at the present day, 
belong to the productions of different climates and differ- 
ent local conditions The general effect of the whole 

investigation is, to prove a unity of design pervading the 
fossil and living creations — one general system is dis- 
covered — and the variations are referred to difference of 
circumstances" 

Two suggestions follow this statement : — 

First. Has the geologist penetrated every rock for- 
mation throughout its entire extent, to determine 
what fossils it does contain ? and, 

/Second. Has he, in like manner, explored every por- 
tion of the earth and waters, and can he say, definitely, 
that the animals, so represented, are not now upon the 
earth, or, if not, that they have not lived in the post- 
Adamite times ? 

So far as the geologist knoivs, every rock formation 
may contain every known fossil form, and many more 
now unknown, since his explorations can never exceed 
one millionth part of any given formation. In like man- 
ner, he can never assert, truthfully, that any animal, in 
part or in whole represented by a fossil, does not, in this 
day, live in some portion of the earth. These two 
facts should, of themselves, be sufficient to arrest at- 
tention, and show the enqidrer after truth that no dependence 



200 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

can be placed upon such undeterminable conclusions, unfound- 
edly drawn from such vague data. 

Nor can the geologist, as we have said before, show, 
except inferentially, that a single fossil form was pre- 
Adamite, yet all analogies in nature lead us to the 
conclusion, that there must have been pre-Adamite 
archetype fossils, to have started the law of petrifac- 
tion, in example, just as every line of existence was 
started in a completed archetype form, and the law 
regulating its reproduction was first made manifest in 
that form. 

There is still another class of fossil forms which 
have not been considered, and which, to every mind, 
presents more of mystery, and leads it insensibly to 
lean to the conclusion, that such forms at least, what- 
ever may have been the origin of those which we have 
considered, were preceded by the causes which appear 
to have produced them. We refer to the imprints of 
various kinds found upon rock formations : being — 

Imprints of the vegetable kingdom. 

Imprints of fishes and animals. 

Imprints of raindrops : and 

Imprints of animal tracks. 

This brings us to the division of the post-Adamite 
fossil kingdom into two classes, or rather species : — 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 201 

First. The species having animal and vegetable matter 
minus vitality for one parent, and petrifaction or the rock- 
consolidating principle for the other, and which we have 
considered. 

Second. That species having vegetable, animal, or min- 
eral matter ivith or ivithout vitality for one parent, and the 
combination of the petrifying or hardening principle in rock 
ivith plasticity of matter for the other, and which makes 
the class of imprints of which we are about to 
speak. 

The stone fossil, being the first species, is plainly 
discernable from the second, though the two accom- 
pany each other in the same manifestations. For the 
imprint is sometimes found to be wholly or partially 
filled by crystals, or amorphous masses, like a cast in 
a mould. 

The rain-drop imprint is handled with amazing force 
by the geologist, and the foregone conclusion on the 
mind is that rain must have produced such an apparent 
phenomenon. The first question which may be asked 
respecting it is — "Is the imprint a pre-Adamite or 
post- Adamite form V If shown to be the former, then 
it is, like all other pre-Adamite fossils, an archetype ; 
for analogical reasoning brings us to the conclusion 
that all reproduced forms must have had a fiat origin 



202 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

in an archetype, as the pattern for a reproduction, not 
possibly in exact size but in character, such as to 
establish the law in a manifestation. 

In like manner, the imprint of animal tracks follow- 
ing the same law, we may expect to find in pre- Adam- 
ite rocks this peculiar entity in archetype. It matters 
not how strange or odd the thing may appear to us, 
or how unable we may be to found in reason such 
lines of existences upon the rule of fiat law, or mani- 
festation in a pattern ; these reasons become more ap- 
parent on close analogies. 

The imprints of vegetable and animal matter with 
or without vitality — of matter neither vegetable nor 
animal — only vary the parent on one side, while the 
other is due to the plasticity of matter and the rock- 
hardening principle. 

These, we think, include all the classes of imprints 
which are urged by geologists as grounds for the 
adoption of their faith, and may be regarded, in con- 
nection with the stone fossil, as composing all the va- 
rieties or types (for we will not cavil about terms) 
which compose the fossil kingdom. 

In the examination of these, as bearing upon the 
geologic theory, the first question to be decided, when 
any fossil imprint is produced, is, whether it is a pre- 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 203 

Adamite form. But, as we have said before, this can 
not be ascertained for a certainty ; yet all analogical 
reasoning induces us to believe there were pre- Adam- 
ite imprints of the nature and kind denominated: else, 
how can they re-form now ? 

If we adopt the principle of a creative fiat at all, 
we must apply the rule to all lines of existences, or 
show plainly a reason for an assumed exception — or 
our reasoning fails upon its own data. Now, when the 
rule of the creative fiat is adopted, it simply amounts 
to bringing natural archetype forms into existence 
without parents. If, then, a natural form has no pa- 
rent which gives rise to its reproduction, then that line 
of existence is exempted from the rule. But we have 
yet to learn of any form in Nature which has not its 
parent or parents. 

The parentage of the imprint, we have seen, is most 
undoubted, and is as clearly established as that of any 
other line of existence or in any kingdom made up of 
those lines. The animal, vegetable, and mineral pa- 
rents are each more plainly seen than the other ; and 
we may, with profit to the reader, ask here, what is 

PLASTICITY OF MATTER? 

Why can a cat make a track on the snow ? 
Why can a horse make a track in clay ? 



204 FORMS IN TkE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

Why can a man make his track in mud ? 

Why can waves ripple up a beach ? 

These are all questions referred to the plasticity of 
matter, and we can just as soon answer them as we 
can — 

Why a cat can not make a track on steel ? 

Why a horse can not make a track on the rock ? 

We can answer these after our own fashion ; but we 
can assign no other reason than the fact that they 
were made so. There is no abstract reason why snow 
was made plastic to receive an impression ; nor is 
there any abstract reason why steel should not have 
had the same quality, other than the uses they were 
to be put to, suggested by the wisdom of the Cre- 
ator. 

Nor do we think snow could have had that plas- 
ticity imparted to it, to give birth to new and indepen- 
dent forms of matter, without that law of plasticity 
was manifested in the independent forms there to be 
obtained. 

The snow-tracks are independent entities, and are 
of a different nature, as such, from the snow-flake 
proper. They are forms in Nature, having parents as 
clearly as man himself; and, though we may not read- 
ily appreciate tjie fact, they required archetypes as 



FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 205 

necessarily, in analogical reasonings of creative fiats, as 
the most important entity on earth. 

The plasticity of matter is the parent, on the one 
side, of all such imprints, as conclusively as the pet- 
rifying (the opposite process) is in like manner the 
parent of the stone fossil. 

Reasonings upon causes why the Creator has made 
this form or that, which we find in Nature, are vision- 
ary attempts to explain Omnipotence. There is, how- 
ever, much depending upon faith as to the manner 
and time of the making of this world. Not because 
of its necessity as the basis of a science, or because it 
will minister to the wants and comforts of the human 
race, but as the basis and a fundamental element in 
the biblical Christian faith. It is not for us to assert 
whether these are well chosen, or for what reason they 
have been thus engrafted ; but one thing is certain — 
that whatever is assumed respecting archetype forms 
in Nature are equally unknown to the geologist and 
the Christian. Both convictions, whether they be of 
fiat law or development, are simple matters of faith. 
It is, then, for the biblical Christian to assert, equally 
with the geologist and as positively, that fiat law in all 
archetype forms is the true science ; while the geolo- 
gist, who admits that law to every existence save one. 



206 FORMS IN THE FOSSIL KINGDOM. 

and that the fossil, may assert as positively that devel- 
opment in the fossil kingdom makes science alike of 
his faith. 

Who will deny to the latter his right to that faith, 
provided, he does not rest his acres upon other men's 
titles ? 



HUGH MIILER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 207 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

The independent mind, not swayed by the clever an- 
ecdotes and imaginary stories of this surpassingly gifted 
man, will see, in all the arguments which he adduces, 
that it is not so much the explanation of the revealed 
by the discoverable, as it is to make the revealed sub- 
servient to the discoverable. In other words, it is ap- 
parent that his mind was wholly taken possession of 
by his speciality, and a fossil was his God. Nor is he 
alone in such a position. The stronger the mind, the 
greater the application — the more earnest the re- 
search, the less are the opportunities for the consid- 
eration and digestion of other and, possibly, more 
important collateral facts. The gambler pursues his 
play till he quotes scripture to prove the uprightness 
of his profession. The man who demands your purse 
points to the distinguished death of two of his trade. 
The atheist quotes scripture as an excuse for his ap- 



208 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

parent belief; while geology endeavors to show, in the 
present instance, that the dreamings of Hugh Miller, 
not the revelations of Moses, are to be taken as the 
true scripture. 

Mr. Miller evinces, throughout his entire works, the 
strongest evidence of a man with one idea, and from 
his own confession, little qualified to cope with the 
Scriptures, either in the original, or as a close student 
of the English translation. We care not how much 
detail he may display in his knowledge of the a dis- 
coverable," nor how superficially erudite he may be in 
compassing the entire subject of which he treats but a 
fraction — if he be totally ignorant of the revealed, 
certainly his comparisons must be the height of folly. 
It is a common notion among men, that to make them- 
selves notorious or distinguished, they must pursue 
one department of knowledge ; and if Mr. Miller had 
not departed from the rule, he would have been nigh 
immortally distinguished, not only as he is, but those 
laurels would have remained untarnished in the lapse 
of time. 

But he was evidently anxious to cover too much 
ground, and has no doubt on this account, gone be- 
yond his depth. Had he confined himself to the 
development of his mineral forms, and displayed his 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCO VERABLE AND REVEALED 209 

amazing descriptive ability to spread knowledge re- 
specting them, as such he would ever have been re- 
membered in literature, free from the blemishes which 
he has now left upon his fame. His early advantages 
in education scarcely warranted the hope, that he 
could, in a comparatively short period of time, master 
geology in its wondrous detail, the sciences upon which 
he supposed it was founded, belles-lettres, theology, 
and the Bible, so completely as to set himself up as 
teacher of all the former, and annihilator of the latter. 
A man's opinions on any subject are to be weighed 
by the reflecting portion of the community, first by 
their supposed accuracy, and, if new, by the knowledge 
which that man possesses, or is supposed to possess, 
and which he has brought to bear upon the point 
under consideration. If, then, we judge Hugh Miller's 
works by this rule in science, where shall we place his 
productions, wherein he has dealt only in assertions, 
and, /rem the first line of his writing to the last, there is not 
a single ivord of proof of his postulates ? He asserts, to be 
sure, so can any author do the same. But we appeal 
to his most devoted admirers, and ask whether he has 
shown or proven that a single fossil which he has 
elaborated upon, or explained, ivas a pre-Adamite fossil. 

Now, if they are not pre-Adamite fossils, what does 

14 



210 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

all his works amount to scientifically. This is the sum 
and essence of all his geology, as opposed to scripture. 
Then these evidences, and this "Testimony of the 
Rocks," is testimony about what ? That these fossils 
exist, and are of the form, fashion, and shape that he 
claims ? For, in all that he has written, he does not 
pretend to prove more; and, if he did, his proof is 
nonsense, because, in the nature of things, he can not 
prove it. Then why does he belie his postulate and 
call it science ? We can give no other solution of the 
fact, than that he did not know w T hat science was, for 
we can not suppose he intended to issue false tokens. 

As we have remarked, in the early part of this 
work, there is no cloak which has covered so many 
errors as that of "testimony," and particularly that 
kind of testimony which is given without any positive 
knowledge. We would, by common law, consign such 
a witness to confined lodgings for a like offence. Yet 
our distinguished writer comes on the stand as a 
witness, publishes his testimony, and would lead the 
public to assume, on his assertion, that the fossils which 
he describes were pre-Adamite, and that they were preceded 
by vegetable and animal life, and has called on the 
world to execute Moses, and disbelieve the Scriptures 
on such testimony ! 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 211 

Like testimony would not be listened to in an ordi- 
nary court of justice, and we do not see on what 
ground it shall be received by the world, to convict 
the Scriptures of an untruth, when they have remained, 

until now, unimpeached. 

Many readers will excuse Mr. Miller, under the sup- 
position that he is a reconcilist, and endeavoring to 
make scripture and geology agree ! What is a recon- 
cilist? Who is a reconcilist in a conflict? What 
need is there of a reconcilist between geology and 
scripture ? He must be dreaming who would wish 
to declare, that to be coincident which requires recon- 
ciliation. The term itself shows opposition, shows 
conflict, suggests that the one and the other are at 
variance, and it is used by men who well know what 
they say, and by its use they would fain calm the fears 
of the scripturalist, till their dogmas gain footing, un- 
der an assumed name and title. 

The distinguished writer shows a cant throughout 
his works, a patronizing style, as much as to say, a we 
do n't want our science shall run down the Bible, and 
I am endeavoring, in every possible way, to avert that 
dire calamity ; so we will call days periods, and fix up 
Genesis so as to make it agree with our true science." 
Now our own sentiments are, and we believe them to 



212 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

be those of the Christian world, the sooner the Bible 
is run down and overwhelmed by such science the bet- 
ter; and instead of doing Christians a favor by such 
attempts at reconciliation, you do them great dis- 
service. 

The Bible is true as it stands, or false as it stands ; 
and if, on its face, it is committed to error and false- 
hood, geological patching will do it no good. It is not 
a leaky hull that any skilful calker or mechanic, with 
his stone hammer and graver, can either make tight or 
loose at his option. 

It is not our intention to deal harshly, but kindly, 
with Mr. Miller's errors and mistakes. Our object is, 
to show wherein he is on false ground respecting the 
creation and the writings of Moses, and do it boldly 
and fearlessly. 

We, too, believe, with him, that the entire scriptural 
truth rests upon the Mosaic record, for he says, "the 
grounds of the Mosaic record are those on ivhich the other 
scriptures rest." Mr. Miller seemed well aware, to at- 
tack the Mosaic record was to attack the entire Scrip- 
tures, and hence, seeing that his assumed postulate, 
that pre- Adamite fossils ivere preceded hy vegetable and 
animal life, led to a direct conflict, he has pursued the 
one-idea course of changing the channel of the Bible 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 213 

stream, rather than inquiring, for an instant, whether 
his assumed postulate was true — a very natural error 
for a man of his peculiar temperament and views. 

It becomes, then, of vital importance, not only for 
the geologist, but for ,the Bible and Christian believer, 
that each shall understand how much of the Scriptures 
is cancelled by the geologic faith ; that is, how much 
of the old and new gospel dispensations is untrue, in 
a plain philological reading, if the earth and all that 
therein is ivere not made in six days. 

Gen. i. 1 : " In the beginning, God created the heav- 
en and the earth." 

This is copied into the creed : " I believe in God the 
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth!' 

The time consumed in such making is asserted in 
the fourth commandment ; and hence, as effecting the 
main truth of the biblical narrative, the time consumed 
in making is as essential as the fact that God made the 
heaven and the earth at all. 

Ex. xx. 11 : " For in six days the Lord made heaven 
and earth, the sea and all that in them is." 

We think, then, that we shall be borne out in saying 
that the truth of biblical and Christian faith is founded 
upon the important stated fact that God is our Maker, 
and that he made us and all things in the manner 



214 HUGH miller's discoverable and revealed. 

stated in the fourth commandment. For we consider 
the manner of making evinces as much the power of 
God, as that he made the worlds at all, and is as essen- 
tial an element in our faith. 

Then, what shall we say of Hugh Miller as a recon- 
cilist, or of any one of his predecessors, Dr. Chalmers, 
Dr. Pye Smith, and others ? Is there to be harmony 
in flat contradiction? It matters little how much 
fame a man may have spread abroad for himself 
through the press; his assertion that unequals are 
equals will not make them so. If every man who has 
lived since the time of Noah had asserted that God 
did not make heaven and earth it would not change 
the fact. Nor do we think it changes the fact even 
though Hugh Miller, Dr. Chalmers, or Dr. Pye Smith, 
and every man of science who has lived, had con- 
cluded in his own mind that God did not make the 
earth in six days, but that it took Him an indefinite 
time divided into conventional geological periods. 

No sooner can facts be changed by such opinions 
than the language expressive of these facts. Lan- 
guage is as fixed in its nature as the facts or ideas, be 
they facts or no, for which it stands. There are many 
books written out of the Scriptures, but very few in it. 
And if the eminent divines who have lent themselves 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 215 

to the reading of a bible in the rocks — where, from 
the nature of things, detached scraps are gathered 
here and there, quite as likely to mislead as instruct, 
because important parts may be unknown — had de- 
voted themselves as assiduously in another field, the 
Genesis of Moses, they would have discovered the 
key that would unlock all the mysterious forms in Na- 
ture which apparently are to them enigmas. And 
with all due deference to these distinguished names, 
we think at least they would have discovered the con- 
flict in all important points between the biblical and 
Christian cosmogony, and that of the geologic. 

Let us return, then, to Hugh Miller's "discoverable" 
and "revealed," and see the grounds on which he 
would advise the world to adopt the geologic instead 
of the biblical and Christian faith, as to the infinitely 
great question, who did make us, and how were we made ? 

We find him, in the very front of his argument, 
bringing up as his most important witness, " because," 
as he asserts, " it is estimated to include within its pale 
nearly one third of the whole human species" the reli- 
able superstition of Buddhism. We find him saying, 
" Hindooism has been regarded as furnishing exam- 
ples of the geologic doctrine of succession of creations 
extended over immensely protracted geologic periods ; 



216 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

and Buddhism represented as charged with both the geo- 
logic doctrine, and perhaps less astronomic deduction of 
a plurality of worlds." This head and front of his 
argument bears its own comment. 

He then goes on to show the final result of com- 
pleted heathen cosmogonies, and winds up by discard- 
ing all of them as nothing, and " a farago of wild and 
monstrous fable/' except that element in them which 
he extracts — the u geologic successions" — and which he 
elaborates with amazing ability. Thus far, then, by 
his own showing, is the geologic doctrine a heathen su- 
perstition, and is not a new and rising science as claimed 
by its votaries. He claims the superstition to be true, 
and as entitled, from his so-called geologic proof, to 
take rank as a science. 

Then, if there should remain any doubt in the mind 
of the reader as to Mr. Miller's true position with re- 
spect to nigh the whole church militant, that doubt 
could be settled by the following passage, as he claims 
for his discoverable an exalted rank. " Unfortunately, 
however," he says, " what God seems to have done for 
his revelation, influential theologians of both the Eo- 
mish and orthodox churches have labored hard to 
undo ; and from their mistaking, in not a few remark- 
able passages, the scope and object of the vouchsafed 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 217 

message, they have at various times striven to pledge 
it to a science as false as even that of Buddhist, Teu- 
ton, or Hindu" ! ! This is all consistent, and we follow 
him on as he touches the clergy and their teachings 
in a less open but more sneering manner. " I was not 
a little struck, lately," he adds, "by finding in a reli- 
gious periodical of the United States, a worthy Episco- 
pal clergyman bitterly complaining, that whenever his 
sense of duty led him to denounce from the pulpit the 
gross infidelity of modern geology, he could see an 
unbelieving^ rising on the faces of not a few of his 
congregation." 

If this be an original witticism, perpetrated for the 
benefit of Mr. Miller's readers, it is certainly for the 
cause of his sneering infidelity a good hit. If it be 
even a copied idea, revamped in his peculiar style, and 
thus receives his endorsement, it is well done, and the 
sneer will be immortal with his immortality. 

But we come now to the great argument which he 
levels at the Bible, to show that there is no science or 
philosophy in it, and none necessary to its utility. 
For this purpose he brings up the long line of hea- 
then cosmogonies, and successively shows how their 
supporters have erred in their versions of a creation, 
and then cites Cosmos, whom he styles the geographer 



218 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

of the Church, and brings forward all these errors as 
evidence that those who believe in the biblical cos- 
mogony must be in the wrong. So far as our limited 
knowledge extends, these various cosmogonies are not 
found in the Bible ; but their authors, like those of the 
geologic cosmogony of the present day, were anxious, 
nay asserted, that there were good grounds for believ- 
ing them to be true, and some were found therein. 
And the cosmogony of Cosmos (laughably displayed by 
Mr. Miller) was claimed by him, as the geologists now 
claim theirs to be the biblical cosmogony. So it has 
been, and so it will be while the Bible lasts ; some de- 
claring that it is not a text-book on geography, others 
that it is not an astronomical teacher — others, still, 
that it is not philosophy — and hence it must not be 
claimed to be a book of science, but a book of revela- 
tion solely. 

It shall be time enough to exclude the Bible from 
either geography, astronomy, philosophy, or from sci- 
ence in its enlarged sense, when a natural fact stated 
in it shall be shown to be false. If the natural facts 
which may be stated on three grounds — history, rev- 
elation, and personal knowledge — recorded in the Bi- 
ble, are not what is in the strictest sense science, we 
are not aware what science is, or what it consists of. 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 219 

A natural fact, if stated truly, may be history or rev- 
elation, but can not be less than a scientific fact. 
There are many facts stated in revelation, which are 
rightfully scientific facts, yet the weakness of science 
has not yet resolved them, and they may ever remain 
where they are. 

A controlling idea runs throughout Mr. Miller's 
argument, when he endeavors to show that it is the 
fault of the anti-geologists, that geology is not received 
as the cosmogony of the Bible. He says, " Geology 
rests on a broad, an extending basis of evidence, wholly 
independent of revelation, on which they (the anti-geolo- 
gists) profess, very unwittingly in all the instances I 
have yet known, to form their objections. What they 
need, at most, promise themselves, is to defeat these 
attempts to reconcile the two records, which are made 
by geologists who respect and believe the Scripture 
testimony." 

This may be taken as a sample of the geologic mode 
of reconciliation of the " discoverable" and " revealed," 
and, certainly, it is blowing hot and cold at the same 
breath. First, he asserts the evidences of geology to 
be independent of revelation, and proposes a reconciliation 
between the two, by having revelation absorbed in 
geology. He then complains of the anti-geologist, be- 



220 HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVERABLE AND REVEALED. 

cause they will not surrender revelation to geology, 
and lauds the geologists for their respect of reconcilia- 
tion with the Scriptures. This is geologic logic mani- 
fest in its sublimest form, and worthy of such double 
elucidation as Hugh Miller alone could invent. 

No, the truth will show itself at times when a writer 
might wish to conceal it. He foreshadowed what he 
knew must eventually be the result, that any attempt 
at reconciliation would result in total disunion, when 
he said, " what the anti-geologists need, at most, prom- 
ise themselves, is to defeat these attempts to reconcile 
the two records," &c. 

So far as we can discover from the entire tenor of 
the "Testimony of the Kocks," and especially the 
article under the head of " The Discoverable and the 
Eevealed," it would be difficult for a casual reader to 
determine which result Mr. Miller was laboring for 
most, the reconciliation of the two records, or their 
establishment independent of each other. He was, 
beyond all question, an out-and-out geologist, imbued 
with every element of his theory, and excited to a 
pitch almost bordering on frenzy, and yet contrived to 
sprinkle into his writings, so artistically and skilfully, 
just enough of Christian soothing reconciliation to en- 
trap and ensnare those who were lulled by the sweet 



HUGH MILLER'S DISCOVKRABLE AND REVEALED. 221 

music of his style into unconsciousness, and who did 
not, in that dreaming state, penetrate the fog of words 
and rhetoric with which he surrounded them. Many, 
unquestionably, at some future day, will read his works 
with a different bias, and no doubt will be astonished 
at the conclusions to which they were drawn, solely 
by dint of elegant language and bewitching harmony 
of words. 

We can spare no more space to the consideration 
of the peculiar idiosyncracies displayed in his works. 
There is a truer judge who will speak when we have 
done. Posterity will do them justice, if we have dealt 
unjustly by them. The man we admire because of 
the magnetic fire which his pen put into everything it 
touched, and the gallant style in which it was done. 
But his geology, alas! what science! his theology, 
alas! how anti-biblical! and his writings, alas! how 
plausible and how hurtful ! 



222 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

The point at issue between the geologic reconcilist 
and the biblical Christian, resolves itself, as we have 
seen, into a mere question of Faith. To the geologist 
proper, who bases his faith respecting a creation upon 
the same grounds as the reconcilist, the same argu- 
ments used for the one will equally apply to the other. 
Yet to the former we can not object to his faith, so 
long as he does not endeavor to force it upon others 
under an assumed name. 

But to the geologic faith as attempting to supplant 
the biblical Christian faith, our remarks are more 
pointedly and specially directed. It is unnecessary 
to say, that if the geological faith was the same as the 
biblical Christian faith, there would be no cause for 
reconciliation. 

The thought, then, which naturally suggests itself, 
what is the geological reconcilist's faith ? and what is 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 223 

the biblical Christian faith in respect to the conflict 
under consideration. As we have seen before, there 
are two classes of fossils, whether viewed in the geologic, 
or by the scriptural faith, as there have been two 
classes of trees and plants, two classes of certain form- 
ing rocks, and two classes of animals. 

These two classes are plainly and easily made in the 
mind of any common thinker. The one class being 
pre- Adamite, or those made before man, and the post- 
Adamite, or those which have been reproduced since 
that time. Now it matters not at ivhat time mankind 
was introduced upon this planet, these divisions are 
still good, and are the ones we wish to call special atten- 
tion to, in order to apprehend the difference between 
the geologic faith and the biblical Christian faith. 

We wish to be understood when we speak of time 
respecting the introduction of man, we mean, that by 
whatever biblical chronology that epoch be dated, that 
date divides the two classes, making pre-Adamite and 
post-Adamite. 

The difference between the geologic and the biblical 
Christian faith is, as to the manner and time in which 
pre-Adamite forms in nature, on this planet, were introduced 
by the Creator. 

So far as the geologic faith is concerned, it is quite 



224 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

difficult to decide upon any one of the various sup- 
positions made by different geologists, as to this manner 
and time ; for those suppositions are as numerous and 
different as the geologists who are their authors. But 
notwithstanding this diversity, there is one point upon 
which they all agree, and we shall assume that as the 
element by which to compare and test their faith, as 
in conflict with the received biblical faith : that is, 
each geologist rests his proof of manner and time 
upon previous life, to the pre-Adamite fossils, which 
are in the forms of animal or plant, either fragmentary 
or entire. Each geologist, too, varies the manner and 
time to suit his peculiar notions, while all assert that 
it was not by creative fiats as to manner, nor six days as 
to time. The biblical Christian faith asserts the op- 
posite, that creation was performed as stated by Moses, 
by creative fiats as to manner, and six days as to time. 
It is unnecessary to remind the reader, that neither 
the geologic nor the biblical faith can be absolutely 
proved as we can a problem in exact science, and if 
it were so, we would not style it faith, but science. 
Much of the importance which the geologic faith has 
attained, is referred to the fact, that geologists have 
called their faith science, and thereby misled many 
into the belief, because they supposed there was posi- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 225 

tive proof when there was not. Any intelligent per- 
son knows, that what relates to a creation must be 
taken on faith, yet there are analogical proofs result- 
ing from sound reasoning, which approaches proof, but 
which is not actual proof. 

Hence we call geologic faith, what others might style 
geologic science, but geologic faith is one thing, and 
geologic science is quite another. For there is such a 
thing as geologic science, and it may be stated to be, 
the development and classification of the fossil and 
mineral kingdoms. While geologic faith, about which 
we speak, relates solely to the origin of a portion of the 
things developed and classified by geologic science. 

Now it is the easiest of all things to blend the two 
together, and it is a most difficult thing, for the casual 
thinker, to separate the two, and distinguish between 
that which is faith and that which is science. 

Then, too, there is still another division as to that 
which relates to the origin of those forms which are 
developed and classed by geologic science. 

First. Faith as to the origin of those which are pre- 
Adamite. 

Second. Science as to those of the post- Adamite. 

whose origin comes under the hioivledge of man. 

Hence, we see there is a broad and clear distinction 

15 



226 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

between what is faith in geology and what is science 
To the science of geology, either as to the develop- 
ment or classification of the things which fall within its 
pale, or of that portion which is post-Adamite, and 
which has its origin within the knowledge of man, we 
have but little to say. They are facts, and any man 
can see them for himself; but the conclusions in faith 
as to their origin in the pre-Adamite age, is the sub- 
stance of our animadversion. 

The reader who would understand the course of 
reasoning respecting the two faiths, would do well to 
look carefully at the few preceding pages of this chap- 
ter, for he might not, by careless reading, take the full 
meaning intended, and he would necessarily labor in 
the succeeding argument. 

What, then, are the pre-Adamite forms upon which a 
geologic faith is grounded ? For the purpose of greater 
clearness, we will name very many of the most impor- 
tant, though their origin, as claimed by the geologic 
faith, all depend upon and are controlled by the single 
set of forms — the fossil kingdom. They are — 

Mountain-ranges. 

Metamorphic rocks. 

Rocks with seams and in layers. 

Limestones in their varieties. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 



227 



Sedimentary rocks so called. 
Boulders of various kinds of stone. 
Slate rocks of various kinds. 
Sandstones of great variety. 
Coals of all descriptions. 
Soils of various kinds. 
And the pre-Adamite fossil kingdom. 
We are not aware that geology assigns any origin 
to the following pre-Adamite metallic substances : — 



Iron in mass ; 
Lead in mass; 
Zinc in mass ; 
Copper in mass ; 
Tin in mass ; 
Antimony in mass ; 
Nickel in mass ; 
Cobalt in mass ; 
Arsenic in mass ; 
Manganese in mass ; 
Mercury .in mass ; 
Bismuth in mass ; 
Cadmium in mass ; 
Tellurium in mass ; 



Cerium in mass ; 
Vanadium in mass ; 
Tungsten in mass ; 
Titanium in mass ; 
Columbium in mass ; 
Osmium in mass ; 
Palladium in mass ; 
Rhodium in mass ; 
Iridium in mass ; 
Silver in mass ; 
Platinum in mass ; 
Gold in mass ; 
Molybdenum in mass ; 
Uranium in mass ; 



Chromium in mass ; 

And their almost infinite compounds in mass ; or, of 



228 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 



Silicum, 


Barium, 


Aluminum, 


Zirconium, 


Calcium, 


Lithium, 


Magnesium, 


Thorium, 


Potassium, 


Yttrium, 


Sodium, 


Glucinum, 


Strontium, 




And their various compounds, except such as enter 


e rock formations and fossils above stated ; or of — 


Water of various kinds. 




The atmosphere. 




Oxygen, 


Chlorine, 


Hydrogen, 


Fluorine, 


Nitrogen, 


Carbon, 


Sulphur, 


Phosphorous, 


Boron, 


Bromine, 


Iodine, 


Selenium, 



And most of their compounds ; or of the subtiles, 
heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and galvanism. 

All the above-named substance, and we may say 
most if not all of their compounds, are admitted, by 
both geologic and biblical scholars, to be pre- Adamite. 
It will be sufficiently accurate to call all pre-Adamite, 
without distinction, as being the burden of the geologic 
and biblical Christian faith. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 229 

It is fairly claimed, and, we think, no geologist will 
gainsay the position, that no theory as to the forma- 
tion of the sedimentary processes could be maintained 
without the aid of the fossil. There is no internal 
evidence which would be controlling in such a conclu- 
sion without them, and hence, we say, the pre-Adamite 
fossil governs any geologic theory as to the formations 
of the pre-Adamite earth. So that, although it may 
not be the only ground on which the geologist reasons, 
it is, nevertheless, the controlling one, and hence may 
be treated as the exponent of the theory, whatever it 
may be. 

Then respecting pre-Adamite forms relative to the 
geologic faith, there are two distinct classes. 

First. Those to which geologists pretend to assign an 
origin in development. 

Second. Those of which they can give no possible 
account whatever except as of fiat origin. 

While in the biblical Christian faith there is but one 
class, that of creative fiats. 

Some geologists approach so near to the latter, as to 
admit creative fiats in all pre-Adamite forms, except in 
the fossil kingdom and its dependences. These are 
the views of Mr. Hugh Miller, of Dr. Chalmers, of Dr. 
Pye Smith, and that class of reconcilists. In other 



230 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

words, they admit creative fiats to the light, to matter, 
to water, to atmosphere, to the existing vegetable 
and- animal kingdoms, but deny it to the rock forma- 
tions ; and as for the pre- Adamite substances and forms 
which we have named, as not accounted for by geolo 
gists, they skip all that department of Nature, for they 
neither develop it according to any hypothesis, nor 
show it as of fiat origin. It is not difficult, then, for 
the reader or geologists themselves to determine, how 
heavily against such witnesses, under the solemn garb 
of testimony, lies the implied charge of possibly telling 
the truth, and reserving the whole truth. As a matter 
of story-telling, we know well that a writer is bound 
by no such restraints, and he is at liberty to say as 
much and what he pleases ; but geologic writers gen- 
erally, and we may say, universally, are not men of 
straw, they are men of avowed scientific acquirements, 
who, if they do not subscribe to their works and opin- 
ions as testimony, the world assumes, from their char- 
acter and reputation, at least that it is such. 

We may safely assert, without the fear of contradic- 
tion by the most hair-brained geologist, that there is 
not one " completed result," or natural form, in a hun- 
dred, which is accounted for in the geologic develop- 
ments, or assigned any other origin than that in crea- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 231 

tive fiats. But to return to the two faiths. Let us 
then sum up, if we can, all those forms in nature which 
are admitted by geologists generally, as of the fiat 
origin. For there are two classes, even of these, as 
bearing upon a conflict with the biblical Christian 
faith. 

First. That class of forms which are admitted as of 
fiat origin, within the Mosaical six-day creation. 

Second. Those claimed as of fiat origin, in distant 
and different geologic periods. 

Of these two classes no distinction can be made, as 
to the manner of the fiat. Each are admitted to be 
the result of God's creative will exercised upon prim- 
ordial matter, to produce, instantaneously, the various 
completed forms. The only difference is, as to the 
date, or time, at which they were introduced. 

There is but one more class of substances, or forms, 
w T hich make up the entire list in nature considered as 
of geologic origin. 

These are reproduced and resulting fossil forms, from 
pre-Mosaic geologic fiat forms ; and on this ground is the 
entire controversy, as between geologic faith and the biblical 
Christian faith, because the latter claims, as stated by 
Moses, that all substances and forms were fiated in six 
days, while the former asserts that these fiats were not 



232 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

in six days, but extended through vast, unknown, and unde- 
terminable, and distant, and different periods from each other. 
These, we think, are the true and only grounds of con- 
flict between the two faiths, setting aside all minor and 
unimportant considerations. For the geologist will 
perceive, that if the reproduced and resulting fossil forms, 
from which he draws the inference of date, were also 
admitted into the Mosaic six-day fiats, the two faiths 
would be the same. 

The whole question of conflict between the two 
rests upon the evidence which the geologists present, 
to show this simple question of date of creative fiats. 
Their reasoning on the evidence is of two kinds, inferen- 
tial and analogical; while the evidence and reasoning 
on the part of the biblical Christian faith, is not only 
inferential and analogical, but approximately scientific. 
We say scientific, because the geologic faith requires 
the laws of Nature to be changed from what they are 
now to bring about their dates, and asserts conditions 
of matter which have no precedent — a decidedly unsci- 
entific assumption; while the biblical Christian faith 
presents as evidence in its favor these unscientific as- 
sumptions, shown to be such by scientific conclusions 
supporting every point in the chain of argument, by a 
precedent and the equilibrium of Nature. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 233 

We will first consider the inferential arguments of 
the geologic faith, presenting every point fairly and 
fully ; at the same time the answers by the biblical 
Christian faith ; then in order, and in like manner, the 
analogical ; and finally bring forward, in conclusion, the 
scientific reasons why the geologic faith is inferior to the 
biblical Christian faith, and why it should be totally 
discarded. It will be necessary to use some scientific 
arguments against both the geologic, inferential, and 
analogical evidences and conclusions; but the main 
scientific argument will be reserved to the last. We 
wish to be clearly understood what we mean by the 
two kinds of reasonings on evidence, both inferential 
and analogical, from which are derived one set of con- 
clusions. It may be difficult at all times to distin- 
guish between the two, and they sometimes occur to- 
gether and in such manner as to be inseparable. Nev- 
ertheless, the inferential evidence we think to be that 
conveyed to our senses without a precedent, made ap- 
preciable by our general knowledge of things, while 
the analogical is a more conclusive kind of evidence, 
and is made so by the fact that we have experienced 
the same or like thing before as a precedent. 

For example: if we are passing through a wood, 
and discover what looks like the tip of the antler of a 



234 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

buck, we examine it, find that it has all the little hil- 
lock prominences, the color, evidences of wear, and 
texture of bone, which we know, from our experience, 
must of necessity have belonged to the animal with 
which we are acquainted — we at once say, " Yes, this 
is the tip of a buck's antler." This is reasoning by 
analogy; and, although apparently a plain case, the 
conclusion from the evidence may be utterly erro- 
neous. For, suppose some ossiferous artist had been 
amusing himself to imitate the antler tip, and had so 
well succeeded as to prevent detection by a casual ob- 
server — or suppose another and quite a different ani- 
mal, entirely unknown to the observer, had passed 
that way, and left this little token of an accident — 
where is your analogy ? 

Both these suppositions are in the range of possibil- 
ity, and hence your analogical conclusions might not 
be true ; and if not true by such analogical evidence, 
much less can the inferential be assumed as such, yet 
both at times may be true. 

There is a host of just such evidence, though not as 
strong as the antler tip, advanced by the geologic faith 
in support of its foundation — date of creative fiats. 
There is a small portion of the pre-Adamite forms only 
from which the geologist can reason analogically, while 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 235 

those from which he must reason inferentially are 
numbered by overpowering odds. 

Those from which he must reason inferentially are 
the entire of the massive rock-formations of the earth, 
the mineral kingdom, the metallic kingdom, and that 
portion of the fossil kingdom which has not been rep- 
resented in the knowledge of man by a precedent 
plant or animal, and its subsequent fragmentary or 
complete fossilization. For, although some of the sedi- 
mentary rocks do, under certain circumstances, re- 
form after their pattern in character, they have not, 
in the knowledge of man, attained the massiveness of 
the originals. Their massiveness is the precedent which 
is a bar to any analogical reasoning respecting sub- 
sequent formations. Analogical reasoning will hold 
good, however, as to their being the same kind of 
rock, and forming like other things after a pattern, 
but in no other sense. The circumstances of forma- 
tion, by the showing of the geologic faith, are widely 
different in both cases, and hence similar circumstances 
and causes can not be adduced as a ground of analogi- 
cal reasoning. 

There will be no pretence either that the vast range 
and magnitude of the granites, or the primary and 
non-forming rocks, can be adduced as analogical rea- 



236 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

soning to support the geologic faith. There is no pre- 
tence that they form now, and hence they have no 
precedent from which to reason on their probable mode 
of formation. 

There is then, we contend, but a small class of forms 
in the fossil kingdom from which the geologist can 
reason as to the mode of making, and introduction of, 
analogous and like forms in the pre- Adamite world. 

Before proceeding to consider the evidences, the 
reader must understand that each form in Nature 
which is different from another, and which is repro- 
duced persistently so near like its predecessor that the 
senses can determine its hind or type, is called one step 
in that particular line of existence. These lines of ex- 
istences have been steadily running down from their 
first introduction to the present time ; and while no 
two have ever been merged into one, or any new ex- 
istence sprang from an old one, it is conceded that 
very many of these lines have run out in compara- 
tively a late date. This latter fact it may be well to 
notice, since it may solve some of the enigmatical 
problems respecting the fossil. 

The first set of inferential evidences which the geo- 
logic faith advances is the appearance of certain rocks, 
which do not now re-form, indicating an igneous fluid 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 237 

condition of the materials of the earth as the grand 
starting-point, and is, we should judge, from that fact 
the nearest point to which they can approach the 
words of Moses in the first line of the Bible : " In 
the beginning, God created [space and matter] the 
heaven and the earth." Our reasons for using the terms 
"space and matter" are given under the chapter on 
the first of Genesis in this, and more fully in another 
work ; and we may remark here that it is a very com- 
mon error in writers, and more especially in geologic 
ones (of which Hugh Miller stands a pre-eminent ex- 
ample), to use the terms "heavens and earth," instead 
of " heaven and earth." It is " heaven and earth" in 
the original, in both the first and second chapters of 
Genesis; but in the latter, by some typographical 
error, it has been printed "heavens" in the English 
translations, and hence, possibly, the almost universal 
mistranscript. There is but one idea, however, to be 
gained from both expressions. 

We have treated the igneous geologic theory so 
fully in another work, that it seems like copying our 
own words to rehearse them here ; but the argument 
would scarce be a unit without at least some of its sali- 
ent points. And we feel to make an apology to the 
reader, for taking up his time by a lengthy refutation of 



238 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

such a supposition. Yet all folly is wisdom till exposed, 
and hence to the task. There have been wise men who 
have advocated seriously the former igneous condition 
of the matter of the earth, and we think there are still 
some who entertain such dreamy musings even in the 
present day ; though, whether they do so to provoke 
argument, and thus spread their profit and Quixotic 
doctrine, or whether they do so seriously in the belief 
that it was true, we can not say. We take the fact as 
we find it, and lament the scientific condition of that 
man's mind who can seriously subscribe to the appa- 
rent folly that arsenic, lead, silver, gold, sulphur, car- 
bon, quartz, granite, and limestone, were once a mol- 
ten, homogeneous, plastic pudding ! Well, it is an 
amusing story for some because of its oddity, and pos- 
sibly because of its downright absurdity. But let us 
suppose it to be true as stated, and we try the experi- 
ment ourselves, based upon this fire statement as a 
precedent, because that which has been once done in 
a natural way can be done again, either naturally or 
artificially, by the use of like means ; for, be it remem- 
bered, this is the foundation-principle of all geologic 
faith, and the principle must as well apply to one set 
of things as to another. As the geologist says there 
is nothing like seeing the thing done, and testing re- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 239 

suits by our own senses; we then arrive at conclu- 
sions which can not be gainsayed ! And so, let it be 
supposed, we put on the crucible filled with the facts 
which we have enumerated, to prove the great and 
fundamental truth of all geology, the igneous condi- 
tion of matter at first. We then put into the vessel 
the substances, arsenic, lead, silver, gold, sulphur, car- 
bon, quartz, granite, and limestone, and apply the heat. 
Finally, we have the soul-stirring gratification of see- 
ing the mass gently crouching itself into the depths 
of the fire-surrounded vessel, but we are stifled with a 
most suffocating smell of sulphur, and, as we discov- 
ered afterward, was fortunately driven from the place, 
as our chemist told us the arsenic might have finished 
our geologic experiment earlier than we had intended. 
The curling clouds of smoke which rose from the little 
pit as the heat increased were finally swept away, and 
we began to behold the realization of our fondest 
hopes. The mass was melted, and we stood in silent 
but deep meditation over, as we supposed, a fragment 
of the primeval world. Alas, how pregnant were our 
thoughts ! We fancied, as the heat became less again, 
we should find a real fragment of a real world in the 
blackening mass, and we nigh burned our fingers in 
our indecent haste to reveal the inner mystery and 



240 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

prove our igneous postulate. In our too eager long- 
ing for the consummation of that event, the geologic 
hammer was raised too high, and fell upon the half- 
cooled mass, shivering it to atoms ! Alas ! experiments 
are not always successful. We searched for our gold — 
it was gone ; we next looked for our silver — alas ! it 
was gone also ; of the sulphur there was not even an 
odor left; of the lead, not as much as a bright drop, 
nor anything else save a semi-glassy, brittle mass, 
which did not even resemble granite, quartz, or lime- 
stone. Not satisfied with the result, we started for a 
chemist; told him the whole story, and, as we pro- 
gressed, a twitching might have been observed around 
the corners of his mouth ; and when the whole story 
was ended, he looked at us for a moment and burst 
into a roar of laughter. We expostulated, told him 
that was no way to treat a scientific matter, and asked 
an explanation, and we give it in his own words. 

"My friend," said he, "I perceive you have at- 
tempted a most laudable and praiseworthy underta- 
king — that of proving the truth, or showing the fal- 
lacy, of the foundation of all geologic faith as to the 
course of creation. The result of your experiment, 
however, seems by your own relation to have done 
neither. But you have made a good start, and I will 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 241 

aid you with my knowledge as far as I can. There 
are three laws which control this question of igneous 
fluidity of the matter of which this earth is composed, 
namely, different degrees of fusibility of the various 
substances; different degrees of heat at which they 
are volatilized, or, as we term it in common lan- 
guage, destroyed; and different specific gravities. 
You must have seen, in your experiment — and if you 
did not, you would have seen it if you had observed 
closely — that every substance (namely, the gold, sil- 
ver, lead, arsenic, sulphur, and carbon) had totally 
disappeared before the granite commenced to fuse. 
This supposed fact, then, which geologists assert as 
the foundation of their faith, is simply impossible, as 
your experiment demonstrated. Nor can the fusion 
of the various substances of which the earth is com- 
posed be sooner made together, than you can fuse 
together gunpowder and granite, without the total 
destruction of the former. It is equally rational to 
suppose, and would be equally true to assert, that the 
present vegetable and animal kingdoms and man, in- 
habited the earth in such molten condition, as that the 
other elements, which would be destroyed by such 
heat as well as they, existed in that state unharmed. 

Admitting, for the sake of argument, a total abrogation 

16 



242 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

of the laws of nature as to heat, what shall be said of 
the law of gravity ? 

u It is plain to see, that even though such a state were 
possible, the heavier parts would descend to the centre, 
while the lighter would rise to the top. The average 
specific gravity of the rock formations is about three, 
while gold is twenty ; that is, gold is about seven times 
heavier than granite^ It is useless to speculate about 
such conditions, for without a total abrogation of exist- 
ing natural laws and qualities of matter, such a condi- 
tion is impossible." 

The explanation of the chemist seems sound, as 
must be patent to every mind. Now let us examine 
the grounds given by the advocates of the primordial 
igneous condition of the earth, and see how strong the 
evidence is which leads to the conclusion. They say 
certain rocks, in detached locations, have the appear- 
ance of having been in a fused condition. Possibly, to 
a geologic witness they may, but we have never yet 
seen a piece of primitive rock the size of a man's hand, 
that looked as though it had ever been fused, except 
it came from a volcano, a blast-furnace, or some other 
place where artificial heat had been ruling. It must 
be remembered by these surface-skimming individuals, 
that a lengthy period has elapsed since the Mosaic 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 243 

creation, and time sufficient to extinguish and light up 
many volcanoes has rolled away into the past. 

The reasoning upon these data, few and meager as 
they are, is not analogical, but inferential, as no par- 
allel or precedent has been discovered within the 
knowledge of man, on which to found an analogy. 
The inferential is scarcely maintainable, since no nearer 
similarity can be found than the crucible, of which we 
have spoken, and if that be assumed as a parallel, the 
most that can be drawn from it is, that rock materials 
when once fused, loose their special vitality as such, 
and they never return to their primitive state. 

From this igneous fluid condition, the sage geologic 
cosmogonist elaborates upon a shrinking and crimping 
process in cooling, by which he can demonstrate the 
manner how Chimborazo, or other towering peaks, were 
elevated, deep valleys were cast down, ranges of moun- 
tains were raised, beds for future oceans were scooped 
out, and, by such chance throes, were prepared the 
groundworks and foundations of a world like ours. 
Crazy dreaming! No, nor as much as that, because 
dreams are generally analogical. These are very sim- 
ple suggestions, only fit for destruction by one single 
ray of truth shed upon them. If the supposition had 
the first shadow of strength to support it, a secret sat- 



244 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

isfaction would attend its demolition. But like many 
other assertions, they stand up till overthrown. 

Hence we say, if the igneous condition were even 
possible, the pudding must have been very cautiously 
and carefully mixed, and one kind of material must 
have been divided from another by wondrously accu- 
rate plans of division. For there are no two kinds of 
granite or primitive rock alike, in the various valleys 
or mountain peaks on the earth ! They may have, in 
some few instances, striking similarities, but no two 
mountains in the world are alike in structure or in 
material, which they should be if derived from the 
igneous mass as claimed. Any man must value his 
reputation for science, or for truth, and measure them 
by rare co-ordinates, who soberly sets down to give such 
trash to the world. If he were writing an April-fool 
card, or a penny-a-line moon story, the squib would be 
well put. And when we read their), an inquiring 
doubt funs through the mind, whether the author in- 
tended them as jocular science, or as a forlorn proba- 
bility. 

We pass, now, from this foundation stone of the geo- 
logic faith, or from the liquid to the solid portions 
of it, leaving any mind, not satisfied with our exposi- 
tion, to pursue the phantom still further if they wish. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 245 

At this particular point of the geologic faith its advo- 
cates are at bay, and for our own purpose of having a 
completed and full geologic faith as to a creation, to 
overthrow, we sincerely wish that they could be helped 
out. But having no theory of our own to advance on 
their failure, that point of their faith must go by de- 
fault. 

We refer to the ushering in of air and water upon 
the earth. Now some geologists unwittingly have 
introduced them by creative fiats; but others, more 
deep, have ignored this mode, because that weighs 
heavy, analogically, in favor of the biblical Christian 
faith respecting the introduction of pre-Adamite fossils 
by a creative fiat in like manner. So that, having rio 
theory of successive development, in layers or other- 
wise, to adduce, and finding that creative fiats would, 
measurably, prove the biblical Christian faith, to the 
great damage of the geologic, they have wisely (for 
themselves) leaped over the chasm thus geologically 
made, and skipped the whole subject philologically, 
leaving the tightrwoven cosmogonist in a slough of 
geologic despond. We do not know but that the defect 
is somewhat balanced by the admirable accuracy of 
detail with which they make up the remainder of their 
geologic cosmogony. But looking at the failure in an 



246 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

enlarged view, it would seem that an hypothesis of a 
creation which fails utterly in these two great points, is 
weak indeed, and if its advocates help themselves out 
by a miracle, they seek the controlling element of the 
biblical Christian faith. 

We now launch ourselves into that wondrous sea of 
geologic science, so called, at whose portals the finger 
of truth has written letters on the wall — like causes 
produce like results — and like these letters, carry 
with them a particular meaning. If the advocates of 
the geologic faith were guided by the axiom above- 
quoted, then rock formations from a common parent 
would scarcely be developed. Assuming that the geo- 
logic cosmogony has brought us down to solid rock all 
over the face of the earth, in ridges and furrows, acci- 
dentally made by any cause — and by any other cause, 
the atmosphere surrounded the earth, and the waters 
covered some or all of the aforesaid rock, and the 
world was then* water, rock, and atmosphere, three of 
the great elements of our present world — what then ? 

From this stand-point we may stop and ask a con- 
trolling and highly interesting question, both as re- 
gards the one or the other of the two faiths. Does 
the geologic faith evolve all forms in nature, from this 
granite rock by detrital and water-wear, or does it 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 247 

admit creative fiats, when each and all the various 
lines of existences, which are and have been operative 
during all time upon the earth, were first introduced ? 

There are geologists who contend, that all forms in 
nature have been evolved from the granite rock, as 
well as another class which admit creative fiats to all 
lines of existences except the sedimentary rock and 
soil lines, and the entire of the fossil kingdom. To 
the first class, who are of the " Vestiges-of-Creation" 
school, and who pretend to no Christian faith, and 
hence, are not endeavoring to fasten upon it what the 
biblical Christian faith assumes to be false tokens, we 
have no answer to make. They may believe, if they 
choose, that a raven was hatched from the egg of a 
crystal, or from the crystal itself; such faith finds its 
own refutation in more extended and refined knowl- 
edge. 

But it is to that class which, in order to be ostensibly 
shielded under the Christian faith, are compelled to 
take just enough of it to suit their purposes, demolish- 
ing it as a unit of truth, and still claim to give a superior 
geologic faith. We hazard nothing in saying, that this 
latter class, and whom we are answering, admit crea- 
tive fiats in every line of existence in the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, in the metallic, non-metallic, 



248 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

and all primordial matter, while they urge the develop- 
ment process to all rocks, stones, and soils, above the 
granite basis, including the fossil kingdom, both pre- 
Adamite and post-Adamite. 

The character of the reasoning in the development 
supposition is more analogical than inferential, yet 
there is very much of the latter ; we admit, frankly, 
there are analogies for the development of certain 
forms in the mineral kingdom, and, as analogical 
reasons, they are just as strong, and no stronger, than 
the analogy respecting the creative fiats. If we admit 
creative fiats to one line of existence and deny it to 
another, nay, if we admit them to all save one, we 
must show a wondrous reason, amounting to positive 
proof, that that one was not the subject of a creative 
fiat, or the logic will fail upon its own data. 

Hence it becomes necessary, at this' point of the 
argument, to show that all the pre- Adamite lines of 
existences claimed as such by the geologic faith, are 
dependent for their development upon one. The sedi- 
mentary processes claimed to have been evolved from 
the granite rock by water-wear, and detrital, are 
judged of on two grounds. First, that these rocks are 
in layers of various and differing inclinations, from 
horizontal to vertical, and hence supposed to have been 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 249 

deposited, and subsequently to have been upheaved by 
some force into these various positions. And, second, 
from the fact that fossils are found in them, which lead 
to the supposition, that a creation of plants or animals 
lived upon the earth at the time these rocks were thus 
supposed to have been deposited. 

It is but too evident, that without the fossils no sup- 
position of date could be deduced. For the fact that 
one rock lies over another, or that they have seams in 
them, would not be sufficient evidence to draw the 
geologic inference, that one was made before the other. 
Hence, we think, no objection will be urged, in as- 
suming that the fossil controls the whole question as 
to geologic development of pre-Adamite forms. Then, 
as the whole ground of assumption depends upon the 
fossil, we may treat all other lines of existences as 
having started in a creative fiat. This simplifies the 
argument, and enables the mind to arrive at the grain 
without wading -through such mountains of chaff 

As far as the experience of man goes, like causes 
produce like results, and revolving this in our minds, 
we naturally ask, why comes from this water-wear and 
detrital of one kind of rock, so many different and 
widely-varying forms? Why comes from the same 
cause the gneiss mountains — the mica, talc, schists, 



250 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

and slate, in their great varieties — the wondrous and 
widely-spreading clay slates — the extensive grauwacke 
conglomerates — the so-called silurian limestones — 
the immense masses of the old red sandstone — the 
towering mountains of limestones — the necessary, but 
mysterious variety of coal-beds — the magnesian lime- 
stones — the immense layers of sandstone called the 
new red — the large family of limestones under the 
titles of shell, lias, oolite, and chalk beds — and, finally, 
the clays, soils, boulders, and that vast variety of other 
forms not spoken of by this hazy supposition — the 
metallic and non-metallic substances in their endless 
compounds ? With a gravity due to sublimer subjects, 
our scientific geologist asserts this great and well-estab- 
lished principle, that like causes produce like results, yet 
to accommodate the pre-Adamite fossil, and make it an 
exception instead of being obedient to the analogical 
rule of creative fiats, he calmly expunges this cardinal 
of science, and makes the solemn fact a farce. 

If this vagary have a shadow of comeliness as a 
science or truthful hypothesis, why can not the granite 
evolve the metals, or the non-metallic compounds, as 
well as the vast rocks said to owe their origin to this 
source, and which hold them all within their deep- 
down solidities. How does this stalworth phantom 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 251 

tell the story of the broadcast jewels, the thread-metal- 
lic veins, their secret mineral and metallic hiding-places, 
which when revealed are like star-dnst in the deep ex- 
panse of space. Can it tell why one star is brighter 
than another star, or why they are at various distances 
from each other, or whether they are, or are not, the 
clippings of some great central mass of granitic star- 
light, shaved off in the processes of time, by some 
huge, unknown, indefinable, and mysterious machine ? 
We can determine no good ground for one propo- 
sition being superior to the other, except that the 
latter is newer than the former, and may be the basis 
of as consistent an hypothesis. The failure of the 
faith to give an approximate idea how these thousands 
of elements, in the so-called sedimentary rocks, could 
have been mechanically, or by fiat, introduced in place, 
makes the faith assume rather the character of a joke 
than a serious reality. For, suppose we assume that 
the geologist be driven, as he is, at last to admit their 
introduction in place by a creative fiat, what shall be 
the nature of that fiat? Shall it be by the rule which 
is admitted as that which bears the greatest amount 
of probability, that kingdoms are the subjects only of 
such miracle, or that each mass or fibre, as the detrital 
and sediment went on, was added, as the mode of 



252 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

creative wisdom. If the latter, the world, in the ear- 
lier geologic age of water-grinding, would present the 
splendid spectacle of a country flouring-mill, where 
netted cobwebs catch the flying dust, and where each 
thread or mass was, relatively, a sparkling line of 
jewels, or suspended metallic compounds, glistening in 
the streaming sunlight, as it fell through some acci- 
dental opening upon these otherwise unseen beauties. 

The first natural suggestion is, why are the pre- 
Adamite fossils elevated or depressed (for it matters 
little which term is used), in their origin, above or be- 
low the jewels or the metallic compounds ? For they 
are nigh of the same composition as the former, while 
they are far less intricate in construction than the lat- 
ter. Taking, then, the analogy of thousands against 
one, where is the logic which binds to the conclusion 
that the pre-Adamite fossils were an exception to 
the rule of creative fiats, calling upon the Creator to 
do on this account a million, yea, billions of times 
more work than would be necessary to produce the 
required result, making his creation a huge folly of an- 
alogical contradictions, violating natural laws at every 
single step, calling upon monstrous unknown and un- 
precedented causes to show forth power and wisdom ? 

What geologist is bold enough to say to the world, 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 253 

if he respects himself, that he sees a probability, in 
any department of Nature which suggests an analogy 
or an inference, that* twenty thousand cubic miles of 
limestone have been evolved from granite rock ? Why, 
this simple, single, isolated, declared fact eclipses Mun- 
chausen, as well as the Arabian Nights Entertainment 
in the strong analogy of Aladdin's lamp. We will not 
say that the geologists have been as frank as to bind 
themselves to the exact number of cubic miles, but they 
have calculated the amount of coal to be about fifteen 
hundred cubic miles ; and we shall come far short of 
the fact, if we assume near thirteen feet of limestone 
for every foot of coal ; and we will repeat the inquiry 
here — Which bears the greatest amount of probabil- 
ity of being true, this single hyperbolical assumption 
respecting the impossible origin of the vast family of 
limestones, or that the pre-Adamite fossils were made 
like other admitted forms, by a creative fiat ? 

Every chemist and mineralogist well knows that 
lime enters into the composition of the granite rock ; 
but so sparingly, that, to obtain this amount of car- 
bonate of lime required by the geologist, carbonic 
acid gas, in volume nearly equal to our atmosphere, 
would first be necessary, and then the debris of granite 
which would be left would make nigh twenty times 



254 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

the bulk of the entire so-called sedimentary rock-for- 
mation. Now this is a mechanical, or we may say pos- 
sibly an arithmetical, calculation, which any schoolboy 
can make ; that is, given the quantity of granite rock 
(which in an average contains sufficient lime, for all 
kinds do not), and given the amount of limestone on 
the earth. Not only the volume of carbonic acid gas 
which would have been required, but the debris of the 
granite rock left, could be as accurately calculated as 
can the number of feet in a cord of wood. 

Hence we say the family of limestone-rocks of the 
earth, each and every of which perform their offices as 
original elements in the great design, is a positive bar to 
the geologic faith that these rocks have had their ori- 
gin in detrital and sediment. And we here assert, for 
the benefit of those bearing the biblical and Christian 
faith, that no devices of sophistical arguments, in our 
opinion, can ever be adduced, which will make the 
limestone family dependent upon the granite rock 
and detrital for its origin. There are internal as well 
as external evidences, which quite overshadow any 
such supposition ; and if the truth or falsity of the Bi- 
ble is to depend upon this element of geologic proof, 
the more the subject is handled, the weaker it be- 
comes as evidence to show that pre-Adamite fossils 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 255 

were preceded by animal and vegetable life, or that 
none of that kingdom have had their origin in crea- 
tive fiats. 

We would be more particular to elaborate like fal- 
lacies in the clay slates, the coal-measures, and other 
portions of the detrital faith ; but we have done that 
in another work, to which, for farther arguments in 
the so-called sedimentary rocks, we beg leave to refer. 
There is, however, one point, not handled to any ex- 
tent there, to which we will briefly refer here. If the 
cardinal principle, that like causes produce like results, be 
true, let us apply that principle to the making of soils, 
gravels, sands, &c, which surmount the rock-forma- 
tions. Now, if we did find in this department of Na- 
ture anything to warrant a conclusion, either from 
their form or material, that they are of sedimental ori- 
gin, where is it ? The geologist assumes the horizon- 
tal layers of the various rocks found as evidence that 
they owe their origin to sediment. Now, do they 
claim the same law to the soils, sands, and loam which 
cover rock-formations, as of the same birth — water- 
wear detrital and sediment? If so, why do we not find 
the soils in layers and in levels analogous to the rocks 
referred to ? Is there any plausible explanation of 
the fact ? or will they skip this, as they do every other 



256 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

adverse fact, and generously yield up to the Christian 
faith of fiats these unsolved enigmas ? 

Will they explain how hill and dale of loam and 
soils are the products of their consistent faith ? how 
wide-spread districts occur which have no possible anal- 
ogy to the sediments of the Ganges, the Amazon, the 
Mississippi, or the Rhine ? Neither in composition nor 
in general form do they spontaneously suggest such a 
parentage. Look at the section of any bank of earth 
which contains stones and boulders, of all forms and 
sizes, from that of a robin's egg to that of a church (of 
no mean size, either), and see if you can mark the anal- 
ogy in an alluvial deposit ? If the aspirant will do so, 
or attempt it even, he will have as much ability and 
boldness as has been displayed by the lamented and 
we believe deluded, honest man, Hugh Miller. For it 
mattered little what was the task with his logical pen, 
whether it was in nature or metaphysics, he would 
so skilfully handle, elaborate, and distend truth, and 
smother error, as to make his own deductions positive 
proof for his reader. 

It is so, we fear, with many honest geologists. They 
have an idea to carry out, and see honestly all of one 
side of a question — handle and magnify truths to the 
fullest extent of their tension ; while those which weigh 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 257 

against their dogmas are left to speak for themselves 
how and when they can. This is too much in the style 
of schoolboy dialectics ; and what seems the strangest 
element in the whole matter is, that really great men 
have scanned the horizon of Geology with a glance ; 
have assumed all her dogmas as true, because they 
see so plainly before them that the fossil must be the 
sarcophagus of a plant or an animal. And so with as 
little thought upon collateral truths as they bestow 
upon the food which succored either, they jump to all 
the conclusions advanced. 

Before closing this branch of the subject, we must 
call the attention of the reader to a family of forms in 
the crystalline kingdom which are analogous to those 
of the fossil kingdom, as they will possibly aid the 
mind in detaching itself from the foundation of the ge- 
ologic faith — that of necessarily calling for vegetable 
and animal life wherever we find crystalline forms 
which resemble some fancied or real plant or animal. 
Look you at that section of a block of marble (carbon- 
ate of lime, the same material of which most of the 
fossils are composed), and let your imagination be live- 
ly and earnest ; search over it, and see if you find any- 
thing resembling a form in either the plant or animal 
kingdom. Nay, let your analogies run further — men 

17 



258 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

and women in chariots drawn by flying steeds ; armies 
in battle ; men in single combat ; old women in tat- 
tered raiment ; snakes, lizards, and reptiles ; volutes of 
infinite sizes and shapes. And in the agate kingdom 
stranger forms still : oceans rolling their waves against 
an imaginary shore ; rivers wending their silent, tran- 
quil way downward to the sea ; drowning forms and 
triumphal marches of conquerors, displayed in almost 
speaking truthfulness. 

What are these to the geologist ? Can he in these 
forms read the handwriting of God ? Will his materi- 
alism tell us whence come these things, and whence 
comes this life-sheet upon which they are written ? Are 
they sedimentary ? Have these fanciful forms lived on 
earth, and been ground to dust, and are these the crys- 
talline petrifactions which have resulted from such 
analogous changes ? Let our distinguished literary im- 
mortality, Hugh Miller, have used his geologic steel 
and stone-cutter's graver as carefully on these forms, 
to develop them, as he has used his hammer in the 
geologic field and his pen in the study to develop his 
analogous forms, and the world could be filled with 
fossils ; nay, could be besprinkled with forms at will, 
typical of every line of existence, known or unknown. 

There are forms in Nature untouched by the cau- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 259 

tious pen of geologic faith ; and, although these pencil- 
lings amounting to solidities in distinct colorings, are 
not exact forms in analogy, the mystery respecting 
their establishment as the handwriting of a Creator is 
no greater as to a fiat, than that of a detached fossil 
form of the same composition, and representing similar 
forms. In the kingdom of imprints, however, there 
would seem to be a closer analogy. Nor can we see 
more mystery in the making of a grain of sand than 
in creating; the fossils. Nor is there an element in ere- 
ation more mysterious in its introduction by fiat than 
another. All analogical reasoning respecting a crea- 
tion fails on its own data if any different principle is 
admitted ; though, as we have said before, we do not 
object to a geologic faith such as is advanced, except 
so far as the biblical and Christian faith is affected by 
it. For the good of man, and the enjoyment of our 
own domain and acres, we heavily protest against those 
who advocate a scheme calculated to do so much harm, 
and the unwarranted trespass which it seeks to estab- 
lish as of right. 



260 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 



CHAPTER X. 

SCIENCE OF THE GEOLOGIC FAITH. 

We have now said all that our space will afford re- 
specting the inferential and analogical evidences which 
the biblical Christian faith has to present as a ground 
for its acceptance, and the rejection of the geologic. 
We now come to the scientific evidences, which, in a 
general way, we have collated on page 120, and to 
which we now refer. 

Throughout all Nature there is an equilibrium : by 
which is meant, not only that every element is in 
place, and balanced by the whole, but likewise that, 
by their working together in decay and reproduction, 
that equilibrium is continually maintained. While mat- 
ter takes on different forms, the affinities and actions 
of these various elements preserve their precise pow- 
ers ; and no one line of existence gets the advantage 
of another, by taking more matter than is appropriated 
to its existence. Were this not so, and the energies 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 261 

of Nature were directed, jis claimed by the advocates 
of the geologic faith, to the making of limestone, for 
example, that formation would go on till all the car- 
bon and lime in Nature were exhausted ; or if they 
were operating by their own affinities, without equilib- 
rium and counterpoises in the various lines of exist- 
ence, those would triumph and form, the elements of 
which possessed the strongest affinities for each other, 
and the result would be, not an equilibrium, but Nature's 
energies would be exhausted on those forms. Hence, 
there is a check and restraint put upon affinities, to 
the extent that each line of existence, however weak 
may be the affinities of its elements, retains a control- 
ling vitality, which in the order of Nature enables it to 
secure its share of decomposed matter, to flourish, and 
to maintain its existence. Nor will that existence 
cease so long as the vitality and other parent, whatever 
it may be, act together with sufficient matter within 
reach to make them effective. 

We thus determine, by reasoning upon these data, 
whether absolutely correct or not, that each kingdom 
in Nature has a certain amount of the matter of this 
earth set apart for its especial use, and that the decom- 
position of one portion of it gives material for an anal- 
ogous form to spring to life, requiring some one or all 



262 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

of the elements thus liberated : because the depend- 
ence of one kingdom upon another, and upon the 
whole, bears a constant relation to each other; and if 
any one kingdom should fail to form, that on which it 
depends would fail also, and so on, till all such exist- 
ences having mutual dependencies would be brought 
to an end. 

It will, then, be readily seen how this want of exist- 
ing equilibrium would affect all Nature. The absence 
of any one kingdom, or the excess of another, would 
involve the reorganization of natural laws for a new 
state of things, because new affinities and relations 
would arise on the withdrawal of even one kingdom. 
Then how can we use this probable fact to show the 
falsity of the claimed geologic developments ? If the 
principle be a sound one, the entire range of natural 
affinities and dependencies must have been changed at 
every successive introduction of a new kingdom — the 
formation of every new rock in the mineral kingdom, 
or an excessive and unnatural growth of the vegetable 
kingdom. 

This goes to show an analogical if not a scientific 
reason why the world should have started in an equilib- 
rium of existing entities, and that that equilibrium has 
remained intact to the present day. So, when the ge- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 263 

ologist talks of igneous fluidity of matter, or of that 
state of things claimed as detrital and sediment, which 
only can be paralleled to a huge mill grinding out a 
world, where is the first scientific principle regulating 
matter, the present equilibrium ? Or, when he talks of 
creations which have existed half made with respect to 
ours — of their destruction, and reorganization anew, 
with portions of the last — dropping the remainder, 
and that too without a precedent to offer from which 
to reason, where is his scientific equilibrium ? 

The lines of existences of families seem to us to be 
the warp-threads of creative design ; and, as we trace 
them back in the imagination, we can not determine 
why, as they now mutually depend upon each other, 
and weave forward the woof of Nature, they should not 
have always played alike and in unison to the vast 
alimental shuttle of vitality and life. When, too, we 
know what the shuttle is which bears the filling, the 
supposition becomes riveted into a fact that, the exist- 
ing equilibrium proves the necessity of its own vitality 
during the existence of an organized world. 

If, then, it shall be shown that in each of the geo- 
logic periods claimed, there were no means of feeding 
animated nature analogous to that by which the pro- 
cess is now carried on, it is a dead lock to the supposi- 



264 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

tion that animal or vegetable life existed at all ; except, 
indeed, that the ingenious geologist might assert that 
in those ages they did not live by absorbing alimental 
food, as they do now. This proof, we think, is conclu- 
sive, when the manner by which the process is now 
achieved is explained. 

Everything in Nature is consumed in some way by 
its neighbor; but that consumption accomplished by 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms is sufficient for our 
present purposes. 

In looking out upon Nature, we often wonder why 
it should rain, and deplore the existence of unpleasant 
weather. Though the husbandman knows its value, 
he scarcely comprehends the reason, except from ex- 
perience that it is good. He sees that it refreshes and 
supports vegetation, and thus it becomes a proof to 
him that in some way the rain administers to the wants 
of the plants. But the chemist is enabled to show to 
him what there is in the plant which it absorbs and 
feeds upon, and hence shows from what sources that 
food must of necessity be obtained. The next and 
most natural inquiry follows, " From what storehouse 
comes this supply ?" And here is the whole question 
respecting the geologic pre-Adamite feeding. Where 
were the corresponding means which the pretended 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 265 

pie-Adamite animal and vegetable kingdoms had of 
procuring food and sustaining life ? Let us see : — 

Science having determined the well-established facts 
respecting the kind of food which the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms draw from the mineral, and also hav- 
ing determined the vehicle by which this food is con- 
veyed to them, namely, the rain-waters (which are made 
effective to this end by the relative positions of the rocks 
with each other, and also by the differences of levels, 
by reason of one being higher than the others), he 
looks for the means by which and with which this con- 
stant process was carried on in the pre-Adamite world, 
when it is asserted by geologists that these positions 
did not at all times exist. 

It is found, by the chemical analysis of river-waters, 
that most of them contain the following substances 
held in solution, namely : — 

Carbonate of Lime ; 

Carbonate of Magnesia; 

Silicate of Magnesia ; 

Peroxyde of Iron ; 

Peroxyde of Manganese ; 

Alumina of Manganese ; 

Sulphate of Lime ; 

Sulphate of Magnesia; 



2CG CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

Sulphate of Potash; 

Sulphate of Soda; 

Chloride of Sodium ; 

Chloride of Potassium; 

Chloride of Calcium ; 

Chloride of Magnesium; 

Carbonate of Soda; 

Silicate of Potash ; 

Phosphate of Lime; 

Phosphate of Iron ; 

Organic Matter ; 

Suspended Matter. 
We inquire, " Whence come the river-waters ?" and 
the answer is, " From mountains and surfaces more ele- 
vated than that point to which they flow." To make 
our proof complete, the chemical analysis of rain-water 
before it falls to the earth shows that it contained few 
if any of the above substances, which demonstrates 
that, after they fall to the earth, these various com- 
pounds must be absorbed by the water. Then, too, it 
is ascertained that in dry seasons these substances are 
more sparingly found in the water than in very rainy 
weather. So the proof is rendered conclusive that the 
rains are the direct agents and are the vehicles by 
which these substances are drawn from their resting- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 267 

places on the hills, and conveyed downward to the 
oceans. 

In their passage, the fresh-water kingdoms of plants 
and animals absorb what they require, permitting what 
the marine plants and animals need, to pass on. Sci- 
ence determines also the causes of the rains to be 
evaporation; and hence the round process of Nature. 
Waters of the oceans are evaporated, pass to the atmo- 
sphere in vapor ; and, as though the Creator had ar- 
ranged matters about right, notwithstanding the geolo- 
gist, these mists wander on in the currents above until 
they come against an elevation, or denser current of air 
which, if either be sufficient to raise the vapor to a 
height in temperature great enough to condense it 
the rain will fall as the inevitable consequence. But 
should the vapor not be in condition, or the height be 
insufficient for condensation, it will pass on until it 
meets a higher and still a higher peak, or denser cur- 
rent of air, till at last the rains will descend — and upon 
what ? Upon the cultivated fields of the husbandman, 
it is true, but they will also fall, upon the way up- tow- 
ering, barren, and rugged heights, where none save the 
Creator would think them either necessary or welcome. 
What can be their mission in these lonely, uninhabited 
wastes ? 



268 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

It requires the entire range of the geologic rocks 
to answer this question, for it is to supply the articles 
of food which we have before enumerated, to the want- 
ing world below. Each particular layer contains its 
peculiar necessary, and that necessary can not he obtained 
from any other source. Why, then, the towering mount- 
ain, along up the sides of which you can read the names 
of those storehouses of food piled in regular, nay in a 
methodical order, the one upon the other, to its very 
summit ? Why are they exposed to the view of the 
curious geologist, who spies into their composition to 
draw his inferences ? Does the intelligent reader be- 
lieve they are the result of a shoving up from below 
by a mechanical process, the bare assertion of which 
would be a disgrace to the first day's work of a stupid 
apprentice ? But if the result be attributable to the 
power of an omniscient Creator, working for a design, 
it becomes at once possible, but not by the action of 
organized forces as they are now established. 

These storehouses of food are traversed by seams ; 
are turned up at various angles ; are placed here and 
there, but with a regular succession as to which is 
highest and which is lowest, and with the separation 
between them as decided as there is between the ani- 
mal and man. It will be seen at once that if there 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 269 

were no mountains arranged in the manner specified, 
both as to height and composition, how would the 
rains be condensed ? and, if so condensed, what would 
be the utility of their precipitation, if they had no im- 
mediate duty to perform ? How would they be ena- 
bled to convey to the plants and animals that on which 
they subsist, if that subsistence was placed beyond the 
reach of the rains ? Hence, to carry forward the feed- 
ing processes under our equilibrium, the rains fall 
upon the mountains and hills, percolate into the fis- 
sures, or pass over the surfaces of these storehouses of 
food which are exposed upon mountain-sides ; pick 
from them, as the bee gathers his honey, that which 
their affinities command them to do, and joyously dan- 
cing, singing, and leaping, with their little burden, 
down steep, over cliff, and finally debouching into the 
silver thread which leads to some gigantic river, while 
it pours a stately stream into the spreading ocean. In 
each step of the progress of these mountain-sparkling 
waters on their mission, repeated time and again, they 
find the eager plants and animals waiting their com- 
ing. Their wants are supplied, and the unburdened 
waters pass on, to be returned again to their work. 

Then, assuming this to be the mode of feeding plant 
and animal life now and by means of these elements, 



270 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

does it not show that there was not life in the pre-Ad- 
amite geologic world ? For certainly there were nei- 
ther the mountains nor the completed layers of store- 
houses of which we have spoken in combination there. 
Nor were they in the position for the rains to circulate 
through their seams, because they are claimed to have 
been horizontal. This must necessarily have been so, 
if they were merely sedimental. There were no ele- 
ments in action in the so-called geologic pre-Adamite 
world which could either now or then compass the 
present mode of feeding. What, then, must be the in- 
evitable conclusion ? Either that the laws of Nature 
have been changed at different so-claimed geologic pe- 
riods, respecting the manner of feeding, or that there 
was no vegetable or animal type to feed. The geolo- 
gic believer that vegetable and animal life preceded 
the pre-Adamite fossils may take either horn of the 
dilemma which suits his purposes best. 

All equilibriated chemical science must overthrow 
the geologic faith on this ground, if on no other. But 
to some minds, assertion is as good as proof; and it 
may be well, in this place, to say a few words about 
earthquakes, upheavals, and volcanoes, to show that 
the results in nature claimed to have originated in the 
laws which now govern them in their action are entirely 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 271 

impossible. Who will deny that there is action up- 
ward in the volcano, or disturbance in the earthquake ? 
or who will not say that lava is the result of the first, 
and sometimes the destruction of cities, the result of 
the second? But who will say that he has seen a 
granite or gneiss mountain, or any of the food store- 
houses we have spoken of, thrown from a volcano. 
Lava is one thing, granite, gneiss, the primary rocks, 
and the storehouse rocks are another — yes, quite an- 
another. Thunder, the shock from lightning, that may 
cause a house to tremble, is not an earthquake, which 
can do more ; nor is there any rational analo£v which 
can be drawn from such data, when they have not 
been known to produce the result in exactness which is 
attributed to them. Volcanoes have been known to 
throw up limited amounts of lava, and thus accom- 
plished a hill, or mountain, if you please, but its bulk 
was made of lava, and not of the rocks which we have 
named. 

So earthquakes have been known to throw up lim- 
ited amounts of earth and rock, but never a mountain- 
range, or even a respectable hillock. So that the 
supporter of the geologic faith must admit, that there 
were better volcanoes, and more powerful earthquakes 
in the pre- Adamite world than we have in this ; hence 



272 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

we bring him to the point under this head, that the 
laws of Nature hive been changed regarding volcanoes 
and earthquakes, if he assumes this position, of which 
he can give no proof. But more than this is done, we 
show thereby that he has no existing analogies or infer- 
ences from which to reason. 

But as the upheaval is the result obtained, let us see 
the mechanical operation which the advocates of the 
geologic faith presents, as the means by which mount- 
ain ranges, with their storehouses of food, originated 
in the pre-Adamite geologic world. 

Mountain ranges are made up of cone-shaped emi- 
nences, emulating each other in height, on a given 
plane, which may be assumed as their base. So far 
as our experience goes, few, comparatively, bear evi- 
dences of volcanic relationship, while all are claimed 
by the supporters of the geologic faith, as having been 
ejected upward by a central force, or keeled up from 
below by some damaging process, to what they denom- 
inate the crust of the earth. And when the reader 
shall know, that at least ten miles of rock w T ould re- 
quire to be moved to display the granite, he will 
appreciate the remark. Suppose, for an instant, we 
are so far anti-biblical as to admit the sedimentary 
processes to have formed, that the granite lies deep 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 273 

down below all rocks, and stands, as it truly is, the 
foundation of the earth — over this is the gneiss — 
over this the other primary rocks, and then the food 
storehouses, in their order respectively, and lastly, the 
soils. 

Now we must beg to stretch the imagination of the 
reader a little, in a familiar parallel, but if we reasoned 
geologically, we might claim it as having been, because 
something else was so. 

Suppose we had a mill-pond as big as an ocean, and 
we had it filled with water within ten or twelve miles 
of the top. Just level with the water were knobs of 
granite mountains in great variety, and in number 
relatively equal to the heads of stumps seen in an 
ordinary new-country milldam, where the standing 
trees have been razed level with the ice. We now 
desire to make an experiment, and hence we w r ait till 
the chills of winter have crystallized over our mill- 
dam, and the various knobs were just visible above 
its glassiness. To accomplish our end (having the 
means), we let into our millpond, and atop of our ice, 
sufficient water to make five miles of solid ice all over 
the top of the knobs. When this is solidly congealed, 
we let on, in succession, what will correspond in depth 

to each of the so-called sedimentary rocks, till the 

18 



274 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

whole range is completed in ice representations, and, 
finally, a light snow falls, which answers in analogy to 
the soils. 

We have thus spread over a sufficiently large basis, 
so as not to be charged with unfairness on account of 
its size, and hence, as not being an analogy. Now the 
mountain knobs, under the ten or fifteen miles of ice, 
may be supposed a hundred miles apart. With this 
paraphanalia we wish to illustrate the geologic mode 
of making a mountain, and hence, we either shall be 
compelled to shove the knob up through the ice high 
enough to accomplish the object, or the mountain 
must be made of the ice. For it matters not to us 
what the mountain is made of, when we show the 
assumed manner of its making to be unmechanical 
and impossible. 

To explain how the knob could be shoved up would 
be the argument of the geologist, while to show how, 
by any internal \ ower known to us, it could not be 
shoved up is the dead-lock of their argument. But we 
can show how the crust can be broken, and hence the 
knob can be made to appear, resulting in relative 
altitudes to the general level of mountains, not, how- 
ever, of the composition of existing mountains, made 
of the food storehouses of which we have spoken. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMEMT. 275 

Ordinary things appear large when shown on a geo- 
logic scale. We now proceed with the experiment, by 
drawing off the water from this extensive pond, and 
letting the ice down npon the sides of the knobs. By 
this process we gain the same result as though the 
knobs were urged up by the geologic supposition of a 
central force — and if the result be the same, the geol- 
ogist may as well take our plan of mountain-making 
as theirs, for we think it superior in many respects. 
In theirs of a central outward force they assume what 
is impossible, while in ours we simply use the existing 
force of gravity ! 

Observe the stair-like cracks threading their way 
outward as the water recedes, and the weight of the 
superincumbent mass bears upon the summits of those 
geologic mountains struggling for birth. Those cracks 
open wider and wider, and the sister surface angle 
points, gradually lean away from each other, like the 
members of a distracted and broken family once bound 
together around a common fireside. The waters still 
recede, and the members of that united family lean 
farther and farther from each other, till they rest sta- 
tionary at reserved distances, looking steadily but 
sternly on their former home. 

The metaphor is past, the ice rests in an inclined 



276 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

position upon the sides of the knobs, but where are the 
mountains as claimed geologically. The knob which 
should be the mountain (the granite proper), stands 
ten miles below his geological position, and around 
him stand, ten miles above in a circle, mountain peaks 
resembling wedges, and each resting on the knob or 
mountain. 

Has ever a phenomenon like this been seen in any of 
the geologic range of forms ? Yet every one conver- 
sant with the operation of forces, sees that if the sedi- 
mental rocks, so-called, were ever impressed by an 
under and upward force sufficient to break through 
ten or even less number of miles of their solidity, 
these wedg;e-like mountains would be the result. No 
horizontal or slightly-inclined order of food storehouses 
would occur as they are found. But if we should 
help the geologist out by a horizontal cut, just a little 
below the summit of the knobs, after the ice had as- 
sumed its place, and remove the upper portion of ice, 
we should have the layers of the ice visible, just as we 
now have the layers of rocks, as they appear upon the 
existing granite mountains. It is the great failure, 
and the prominent trouble in this branch of the sub- 
ject, that the advocates of the geologic faith can not 
explain this cutting process, and casting away of these 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 277 

upper peaks. Nor can we devise any relief for them. 
Hence we are compelled to say, that the whole line of 
argument founded on upheavals, is wholly unwarranta- 
ble under the action of existing natural laws. 

How, then, stands our argument in favor of the 
biblical Christian faith, as superior to, and as in dead- 
lock conflict with the geologic, as to the origin of the 
pre- Adamite fossils — whether they were made by a 
creative fiat, or whether they were preceded by vege- 
table and animal life ? 

For the purpose, then, of making the geologic faith 
good on this point, geologists are compelled to violate 
all analogies as to the creation of heads of lines of 
existences by a creative fiat. 

First Because those geologists whom we wish to 
answer, admit and make necessary, creative fiats, not 
only to heads of lines of existences, but to entire oper- 
ative creations. 

Second. They admit creative fiats to analogous and 
homologous existences with the fossil mineral. 

Third. They admit creative fiats to elements, while 
they deny that origin to the completed forms which 
are composed of them. 

Fourth. They admit creative fiats to the existing 
creation, except the pre-Adamite fossils and their de- 



278 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

pendencies, the latter, only, being excluded from the 
rule by the former supposition. 

Fifth. In summing up the number of lines of exist- 
ences admitted as of fiat origin, they are counted by 
thousands, while the fossil, which govern its dependen- 
cies, may be counted as one. For, if the creative fiat 
be admitted to one fossil, all pre-Adamite fossils, by 
analogy, take rank with it. 

Sixth. As reasoning from inference respecting the 
origin of the pre-Adamite fossils, they utterly fail as 
logic, from want of the foregoing analogies. And as 
reasoning by analogy, their reasons fail by virtue of 
the terrific odds in analogies against them. 

Seventh. The inferences and analogies are unsound, 
when argued from, because they do not furnish exact 
parallels. 

Eighth. As a deduction in science, that pre-Adamite 
fossils were preceded by vegetable and animal life, or 
that any given fossil was pre-Adamite, are both mis- 
takes, and are untrue as scientific deductions. For, 
from the nature of things, no proof can be made upon 
either point. 

Ninth. Hence, whatever grounds a geologist may 
imagine he sees in the rocks to show either supposi- 
tion, they are simply the foundation of a Faith. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 279 

To satisfy this one exception to creative fiats, this 
geologic faith requires : — 

1. An impossible condition of matter in an igneous 
fluidity, a state without precedent. 

2. A violation of known natural laws, as to the 
ability of matter to exist together in an igneous fluid 
mass. 

3. The waste of creative energy in evolving a use- 
less amount of heat, to destroy rather than make. 

4. Two contradictory modes of making mountains, 
the one by the corrogated wrinkling process, brought 
about by cooling the igneous mass, and the other by 
upheavals. 

5. The impossible mechanical theory of detrital and 
water-wear. 

6. The abrogation, in accounting for such supposed 
results (the sedimentary rocks), of a well-established 
law, that like causes produce like results. 

7. The unexplained placement of the jewels in the 
so-called sedimentary rocks. 

8. The unexplained placement therein of the me- 
tallic kingdom and their compounds. 

9. The impossibility of the upshooting of fluid mas- 
ses from an igneous central mass, because it contradicts 
the well-known principle of the hydraulic press. 



280 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

10. Hence, the unexplained mode in which most of 
the traps and basaltic dykes were made, if not by 
creative fiats. 

11. The unexplained undulated condition of the 
soils upon the present rock formation, if from detrital 
and sediment. 

12. The waste of creative energy to make, destroy, 
and re-make and re-destroy, to produce the final result 
first aimed at, in order to make one single exception to 
the rule of creative fiats, that of the fossil mineral. 

13. The failure of all inferential and analogical rea- 
sonings on exact data. 

14. The failure of all analogical reasonings as to 
creative fiats. And, 

15. The total destruction of the foundation of the 
biblical Christian faith. 

Now let us see the ground upon which the power is 
delegated to this fossil god of stone. We cast our 
eyes abroad upon the three great divisions of matter, 
the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal kingdoms, 
as they existed at the end of the sixth Mosaic day, 
and we denote them by a figure, as represented on 
page 107. 

By this diagram we represent the starting points of 
all the lines of existences in the Mosaic creation, which 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 281 

are, or have been, reproduced by any law of Nature. 
In the mineral kingdom, it is believed, there are many 
which are not the subjects of the creative reproductive 
will, and hence may well be regarded as the foundations 
of the earth, upon which the reproductive functions 
are developed. 

In the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom, 
it is believed, though it is not proved, that very many 
lines of existence have ceased to be reproduced. This 
fact seems nearly established, if geologic evidence shall 
be taken as conclusive. 

It may be possible, if this be true, that the total 
amount of matter at first devoted to the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, may now, in the great equi- 
librium, be absorbed in a line becoming more abun- 
dant, while another has passed out. So far as the 
analogy extends to the mineral kingdom, it may be 
equally true in it, but we have no evidence to show 
that a mineral form, although in the Mosaic creation, 
and which may have been sparingly, or not at all, 
reproduced, will not, in the course of time, follow its 
pattern and produce a post-Adamite form. 

Looking then at our figure, and at the various lines 
of existences, as they were in the Mosaic sixth day, 
we first find a clay slate, and ask ourselves at once, 



2f2 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 



can a clay slate be now formed, and by what process? 
Geologists, who pretend to be skilled in this science, 
say that it can, and hence we assume the thing to be 
true, that clay slates can be re-formed, and from 
parents, like any other thing. Hence we place it 
down as a line of existence which reaches from the 
Mosaic account to 1860. Next we ask of the families 
of limestones and receive the same answer; of the 
varieties of sandstones and receive the same answer; 
and of the conglomerates and the same answer still ; 
and so we go through with each and every line of 
existence in the mineral kingdom which is repro- 
duced, and set down all of them as lines of reproduced 
existences. Now it matters not whether it be a lump 
of limestone as large as a marble, or the size of a 
mountain, it belongs and must be ranked under the 
appropriate membership of the family of limestones. 
We, in like manner, go through with the members of 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, where parentage 
is more visible, but not a whit more certain, than 
that in the mineral. In the vegetable it is mostly 
traced to the seed, but vegetable vitality can gain 
matter through other processes, well known to the 
botanist. The reproduction in the animal kingdom is 
done by quite a differing process. And from these 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 283 

remarks, we may venture an assertion, that every line 
of existence has a different set of parents. The vitality 
proper, which enables it to gain its share of food, and 
some previous condition of matter, to make that vitality 
effective, constitute the two parents. 

Then let us run our eye through the members of 
the mineral kingdom, and what do we see ? A crys- 
talline form — it may be of quartz. See the lapidarian 
accuracy — alas! greater than that, perfection in its an- 
gles and forms. See, too, the five brother-varieties of 
the quartz-crystal. Do they look enough like brothers 
in form to be such ? No one would suspect them to 
be of common parents, nor are they. They may be of 
the same composition, as one animal is like another; 
but the composition does not govern parentage. There 
is a deeper law than that which controls all results — 
the law of form, springing in different parentages. 

But the crystal, the limestone, and the sandstone, 
can be reproduced by their parents, as well as the 
members of the vegetable and animal kingdoms can by 
theirs. We have but to find out by experience what 
that parent is, on the one side and the other, and their 
union will be productive, if food can be obtained ; and 
the resulting form will be governed by its predecessor 
of like parentage. 



284 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

In searching among these masses of crystals, metals, 
minerals, and soils, we find a wondrous odd-looking 
piece of limestone, or mineral, or quartz formation, 
which resembles an animal or a plant, and yet is not 
either (the fossil). How came this strange thing here, 
and where shall we arrange it in the lines of existence 
to which we have referred, in the mineral kingdom ? 
It is limestone, and yet does not seem to be of the 
same origin as the other limestones ; or it is quartz, 
and in its out-of-the-way place tells no consistent tale ; 
or it is of metal, and seems still stranger : and we know 
not where to put it in the relative position regarding 
lines of existences, as we do the others. 

Let us examine principles, and see where it will de- 
mand a place. Has the thing parents, or is it without 
parents? Will the thing grow, or will it not grow? 
Will it perish, or is it measurably imperishable, like 
most mineral forms ? Is the thing a member of the 
mineral kingdom, or is it not ? 

As to the first question, " Has it parents, or has it 
not ?" this can be determined by experience. Try the 
test : take a plant or an animal, or portions of either, 
and when the distinctive parent (vitality) of either has 
abandoned its material to dissolution, place that mate- 
rial where petrifying vitality may seize upon that void 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 285 

in Nature to establish a new empire, and let that vitali- 
ty have proximity to food, and what will be the result ? 
A new existence — a fossil, as we call it; and, when 
completed, its vitality, like all other completed mineral 
vitalities, will cease to act, and a form complete as that 
of man will repose in its native or passive state, enjoy- 
ing for aught we know as sweet an existence as any 
other fair form of God. Yes, and however much some 
vain men may vaunt themselves of knowledge, it as- 
serts its position and rank in the mineral kingdom, 
with its parents, its quantum of matter set apart by 
Almighty Wisdom for its maintenance, its measurably 
imperishable form, and its unchangeable relations to 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, with a force, a 
strength, and clearness of undeniable truth, that claims 
for it a distinctive rank as a line of existence not to be 
overlooked by the heretic, the atheist, or the infidel. 

Nor can each line of memberships of this mysterious 
kingdom be crowded out of its legitimate place in the 
Mosaic creation sooner than any favorite or more os- 
tentatious and apparently more important existence be 
torn from the fiat law of the Creator. Let him who 
takes the scalpel and incautiously handles it around the 
established laws of God, take good heed. We care not 
how great the man ; we care not how wide his worldly 



286 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

glory; we care not what his scientific reputation — the 
greater each may be, the greater should be the heed. 
It is time for the Christian pure to know who thus will 
take the responsibility of using that scalpel, either on 
the Sacred Scriptures or in the laws of Nature. Stay 
not behind, if you would willingly join in the coming 
conflict between the two faiths. Right or wrong, let 
the geologist, who endeavors to reconcile the biblical 
Christian faith with his pre-Adamite development, dis- 
play his ensigns openly and fairly, and his fellow-men 
will respect his independence, although they may de- 
plore his errors. But let him not fight with the colors 
of his enemy streaming from his fossil standard, or 
waving over his long lines of battle array ! 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 287 



CHAPTER XL 

GENERAL CONFLICTS OF GEOLOGIC AND BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

As a necessity, we are now brought down to that 
concluding part of our argument, which relates to the 
vital principle underlying the whole subject. The ge- 
ologist who claims himself alike to be a reconcilist — 
endeavoring to prove, philologically or by natural the- 
ology, that his faith is identical with the biblical Chris- 
tian faith — assumes a position at once interesting if 
not alarming to those who look for truth in the words 
of the prophets and the apostles. 

Scarcely one of the sacred writers fails, incidentally 
or pointedly, to refer to the creation, in some one of 
its elements, as bearing directly or indirectly upon the 
subject-matter of which they treat. Even the Saviour 
refers directly to the subject of the creation of man, 
the most important part of that great event ; and the 
whole weight of his teachings goes to illustrate his 



288 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

mission as based on this Mosaic fact. When the geol- 
ogist declares to the biblical Christian that the geologic 
faith supports Scripture, and at best only requires to 
this end the patching up of Genesis, he 1 either does not 
know how far the creation is sprinkled into every page 
of the Bible, or else he does not understand the differ- 
ence between contradiction and coincidence. There are 
those who, in this connection, claim that the Bible is a 
book of spiritual teachings, of allegories, and of para- 
bles ; and hence that all matters of science should be 
excluded from it, and that the Sacred Word is not to 
be held responsible for assertions of this kind, because 
of these three classes of statements which it is said to 
contain. 

If our faith and religion be not based upon facts, 
this position and these views of the Scripture might 
be true. But the reflecting mind will see that facts, 
both natural and revealed, are stated in almost every 
line of Scripture ; and it would truly be as startling as 
any other portion of the geologic faith to assume these 
facts to be fictions. It is just this sort of flabby rea- 
soning which has induced many to cast aside the Mo- 
saic account of the creation by fiats, and assume that 
of the geologic, by development. And, as we have 
seen, the grounds of this rejection and assumption are 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 289 

not based in the proof of facts, but in the rejection of 
facts and the assumption of a fallacy. 

We must, then, assume the scriptural statement as 
true, that God made all entities in six natural days ; 
and that the object of such making was, the establish- 
ment of man as the delegated divinity to exercise the 
subordinate control over all. This is the golden thread 
"which is woven through all Scripture, and is manifest- 
ed threadbare in the New Testament, the second foun- 
dation-stone in the biblical Christian faith. 

Divine wisdom is human wisdom infinitely ampli- 
fied ; and when we apply human wisdom to construc- 
tions on earth, it is the unit by which Divine wisdom in 
like things can be measured. Though the subject be 
infinite, it has still its finite unit of measure. 

A familiar example can be drawn from every-day 

life. If you had an edifice to build, and possessed 

Divine power, how would you proceed? — or, rather, 

with your knowledge of things and the operation of 

natural laws, what would you do first ? Would it be 

worldly wisdom to make the whole instanter, in one 

continuous, unbroken, and jointless and seamless mass, 

when each part was to perforin an independent action, 

and where of necessity you must have doors, windows, 

and other shifting and moving agents ? Would it be 

19 



290 CONCLUDING AKGUMENT. 

worldly wisdom to construct the roof first, or to make 
the foundation first ? 

Would it not be worldly wisdom to make the parts 
of the building first ? Then examine them, and see 
that they were good for the purposes intended ; set up 
the framework, and cover, and finish to completion? 
This is a plain proposition, and can be only varied on 
the supposition that man, possessed the power of Di- 
vinity to fiat it into existence. 

But, as man does not possess the fiat power, and his 
abilities are limited to combinations of elements already 
made, he is compelled to accumulate power by time, in 
order to accomplish that which he would do in less 
time if he possessed omniscience. 

Would any geologist, if he had this same edifice to 
build, labor at it through years of toil and anxiety, if 
he possessed the power to do in a day, what many la- 
boring men would require years to accomplish ? Fur- 
ther than this, would he make his beams, rafters, braces, 
and posts, put them together imperfectly, and then de- 
stroy them, in order to build up a new and a better 
structure, even before the first was worn? Still fur- 
ther, would he do this again and again, as the child 
overturns his cobhouse for amusement, till at last a 
structure should arise fitting his first design, and ac- 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 291 

complishing only what he might have done at first 
and at once? 

If wisdom be an attribute of the Creator, it is diffi- 
cult to understand how wise men can call the geologic 
course of creation anything but folly. Endless years 
of Divine effort, exerted to add, fraction by fraction, to 
the vast rock-formations of the earth, to accomplish 
that which his omniscience could and did accomplish 
in a day ! It may be wisdom, and it may be that kind 
of human wisdom which guides the geologic mind to 
call such a wild, fanciful, law- violating, creation-destruc- 
tive, granite-mothering course, that which guided Crea- 
tive Wisdom in the making of this earth. If that be 
wisdom, human folly may soon be at a premium, and 
be sought for as the pure coin of truth. 

Hence, to deny God's fiat creations upon this prin- 
ciple, is laying a grave and serious charge at his wis- 
dom ; and that wisdom being an element of the Chris- 
tian faith, such a charge strikes at the very foundation 
of the biblical declaration on this point contained in 
Genesis, and repeated in the fourth commandment, and 
substantially reiterated throughout the Scriptures. 

That intellect must be obtuse indeed which seri- 
ously avers that the course of creation, elaborated by 
the geologic faith through chiliads of years, is equiva- 



292 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

lent to, or is not in dead-lock antagonism to the scrip- 
tural fact, as stated to have been done in six days. It 
is no less than a burlesque upon language and com- 
mon sense for any one to assert the shadow of a coin- 
cidence between the two. We have seen wherein 
they conflict in all the elements which make up each ; 
and, as a summary and review, we will restate them 
here : — 

First. The overshadowing conflict between the geo- 
logic and biblical Christian faith as to the time con- 
sumed by Creative Wisdom in making this earth ; the 
one asserting that the time was greater than six days, 
while the other asserts that it was performed in six 
days. 

Second. As an element of a creation, the supporters 
of the geologic faith contend that, in its course, matter 
assumed the igneous fluid condition, and that this was 
necessary to consummate creation. No such assertion 
or reference is made in the biblical record. Was this 
condition fiated ? 

Third. They claim a heating and cooling process as 
the creator of certain mountainous and other forms, 
while the Scriptures attribute their making to our God. 

Fourth. They claim that earth (dry land), water, air, 
and light, were made, and in action, myriads of years 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 293 

before the sixth Mosaic day, while the Scriptures de- 
clare that they were made within the six Mosaic days. 

Fifth. They claim that animal life preceded the in- 
troduction of the existing vegetable kingdom, while 
the Scriptures assert, that animal life was introduced 
after the existing vegetable kingdom. 

Sixth. They claim that the existing entities, in a 
large portion of the mineral kingdom, came from the 
granite rock, through myriads of years, while the 
Scriptures state they came from God in one day. 

Seventh. They claim that many vegetable kingdoms 
had been created before the Mosaic, and been de- 
stroyed, while the Scriptures claim only one vegetable 
kingdom has been made, and neither it or any other 
has been destroyed. 

Eighth. They claim that God has created kingdoms 
of animals at various times, in geologic ages, and de- 
stroyed them, while the Scriptures assert, that animals 
were made in two days. 

Ninth. They claim the combined action of various 
vegetable and animal kingdoms, at distant and different 
geologic periods from each other, while the Scriptures 
assert but the existing two. 

Tenth. They claim diurnal motion, for establishing 
days, years, and seasons, began chiliads of ages before 



294 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

the time so stated to be in the fourth day of the 
Mosaic account. 

Eleventh. They claim there have been an indefinite 
number of lights, or days, consumed in the making of 
the earth as it is, at best, more than six days, while 
the Scriptures positively assert the work to have been 
performed in six days. 

Twelfth. They claim, as the controlling element in 
the geologic creation^ that the sun, moon, and stars 
were made, and in action, myriads of years before the 
Mosaic date, while it states that they were first put in 
action on the fourth Mosaic day. 

Thirteenth. They claim and state, that rain fell upon 
the earth before the date of the first Mosaic day, 
while the Scriptures declare that it had not then 
rained upon the earth. 

It is useless to prolong the list of conflicts further. 
A mind that can not see them through this transpar- 
ency must return to its letters. 

It will be urged by many, that the destruction of 
the Mosaic account of creation and the fourth com- 
mandment does not effect the Christian faith, nor will 
it be affected whether the pre-Adamite fossils, be bound 
to the law of fiat origin, or whether they be attributed 
to development. 



CONCLUDING ARGUMEMT. 295 

The Christian faith is a myth, unless the biblical his- 
tory, which records its origin, rise, and the duties it 
incurs, is true. The record commences in Adam, and 

runs in a connected revelation to Christ Every 

word and line through the book illustrates co-ordinate 
truths, bearing directly upon this line, and the whole 
of the New Testament is the illustration of the worldly 
history of the Saviour and his teachings, whose life was 
the summing-up of biblical character, gathered from 
the first line of Genesis to the last of Kevelation. 

If the geologist shall satisfy himself that the pre- 
Adamite world was developed, instead of fiated, into 
existence, he wipes out the Mosaic account, and the 
fourth commandment, and most of the Scriptures. 
Suppose, then, to-morrow another ism or ology starts 
up and wipes out the Pentateuch, and, as a conse- 
quence, the remaining commandments. And next 
year still another, and wipes out the balance of the 
Old Testament ; while in a year or so more another 
shows itself, and aims to prove the New Testament a 
huge folly ! What is to be done or said ? Has not 
the latter as good right to assume his theory as the 
geologist, who commences at the other end of the 
Bible ? 

The Mussulman looks to his Koran as the ground 



296 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

of his faith, and a material change in it would readily 
be admitted as the destruction of the most cherished 
feature of his religion. If the geologist be permitted 
to eliminate portions of the Bible, because his faith is 
strong in the origin of the fossil, may we not reason- 
ably expect other changes soon ? 

No, we urge the intact condition of the Bible as a 
whole, and its support, from two considerations, those 
of duty and policy. From duty, because there is 
Christian instruction from the beginning to the end of 
it, and the Christian faith bears with equal pressure, 
and has an equal support on the whole. If we con- 
sent to the principle of change, it will be admitted by 
any geologist, that neither he or the strict-construc- 
tionist can draw the line at which that inovation shall 
cease. 

As a matter of policy, the structure and mainte- 
nance of governments depend mainly on the force of 
Christianity, and the Bible is the great prop which 
directly supports the political welfare of communities. 
It should, then, be the duty, as well as the policy, of 
every good wisher of the human race, to urge the 
truth of the Bible in all matters of faith. The geolo- 
gist, who founds his opposition to it in the points 
referred to, being based alone in faith, should, as a 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 297 

Christian and good citizen, who wishes the greatest 
benefit to the masses, urge the maintenance of the 
Bible instead of its destruction. 

And now it is not for us to teach those whose duty 
it is to teach us. But there are mutual dependencies 
in life ; none are quite independent of the remainder ; 
nor is knowledge concentrated, as of right, in any one 
corner of the earth, or in any one class of individuals. 
The wise bee can gather honey where the sluggard can 
not see it ; and however humble the flower appears, it 
may, on being nursed, give forth some fragrance. 

It would truly be a Quixotic undertaking for the 
upholders of the Christian faith, to sally forth and 
contend with every ism which floats upon the idiosyn- 
cracies of the human mind. It requires as much judg- 
ment to know what to attack, as how to combat any. 
But it seems to us a plain case, and hence, a plain 
duty, to accept the challenge presented by the promul- 
gation of the geologic faith as the rival of the Chris- 
tian faith, and boldly and fearlessly speak for the 
maintenance of the one and the rejection of the other. 

There could be no worse book put into the hand of 
a child, who was to be educated to believe in the Bible 
generally, or particularly in the fourth commandment 
and our creed, than that one which would bend his 



298 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

mind to the belief, that all these points of faith were 
untrue. Still more when the child, from necessity, must 
be educated in the science, and yet must reject the 
faith of geology. If no one will teach him the differ- 
ence, it is plain to see he will accept both upon the 
same footing. 

To illustrate, too, the effect of teaching on this point. 
We were once endeavoring to show (to a very tender 
intellect, and yet a most devout Christian) the conflicts 
of the two faiths, and the pernicious influences which 
resulted, particularly to the young, as candidates for 
the acceptance of the true biblical Christian faith, 
by adopting the geologic manner and time of making 
the earth, and to prove how essential it was for every 
Christian to understand the principles of fiat law, when 
said she in return : " Why do you oppose geology 
with such amazing strength and determination ? My 
minister has never said ought to us about its iniquitous 
bearings ; and I am sure, if he had found, in his studies, 
that it was anti-Christian, as you say it is, he would 
have denounced it in unmeasured terms." 

This answer is a volume in itself, and was enough 
for us, and the conversation ended abruptly. In that 
answer, although simple, is a sermon from the untaught 
to the teacher, which may measurably explain the 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 299 

cause of the sudden rise into very general acceptance 
of those wide-spread infidel principles : because — 

First. The lady referred to had never heard from 
her spiritual teacher, that there was any difference 
between Geology, as a collection of natural facts, and 
the faith as to the origin of those facts in the hand of 
the Creator. 

Second. She had assumed the silence of her minister 
as his approval of the geologic faith. 

It must be apparent to all, that the unaided efforts 
of a few straggling writers, even though they spend 
their lives, and devote their money and energies to 
this one object, will fall like a raindrop upon the waste 
and hungry sands of the desert. Nor will a scout 
here and there sent out against the heavy entrench- 
ments of the geologists prove more effective, or will 
discomfort them less in their present security. 

We, then, reject the geologic faith, as to the manner 
and time of creation. 

First. Because that manner and time is widely dif- 
ferent from that which is stated in the biblical account 
of the same event. The one is claimed as having been 
accomplished in an indefinitely great number of years 
before the date of the Mosaic creation, and by develop- 
ment, instead of by fiat law. 



300 CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 

Second. The advocates of the geologic faith can not 
prove that any particular fossil was pre-Adamite. 

Third. They can not prove, even admitting any one 
fossil to have been pre-Adamite, that it was preceded 
by life, either vegetable or animal. 

Fourth. They can not show that the fossil kingdom is 
an exception to fiat law in its archetypes. 

Fifth. They can not show that every geologic period 
does not contain the entire range of forms in the fos- 
sil kingdom. 

Sixth. They can not show that evert/ plant and animal 
represented by a fossil, either fragmentary or other- 
wise, has not lived in, and since the Mosaic creation. 

Seventh. They can not show that such plant or animal 
does not now live in some portions of the earth. 

Bet us ask those, then, who feel an interest in the 
maintenance of the true Biblical Christian faith, to 
look well to their means of defence. There is a con- 
flict in the future, or the signs of the times deceive us 
widely, which will be waged on the one side by infi- 
delity, with weapons made by the Almighty himself. 
These weapons are of no mean order, nor are they 
difficult to be handled by raw recruits. While those 
which are reserved for the Christian are of a character 
at once naturally repulsive to the soldier, and only 



CONCLUDING ARGUMENT. 301 

effective in the hands of long-trained, long-tried, and 
skilful veterans. 

The man who holds to the doctrine, or the supposi- 
tion, that the Biblical Christian faith, in its purity and 
unity, has not been actually surrendered by — we dare 
not say how many of the world — and is yielding in 
every avenue of life, daily, to the geologic faith, knows 
little of the undercurrent which sways the public mind. 
This comes, in our view, from a want of education 
upon the points at issue, wrongly certified as science. 
And while these certificates are issued by infidel teach- 
ers, apparently equally ignorant, that ignorance, in the 
main, is only to be eradicated by other teachings — 
"Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little 
and there a little." 

This ignorance has been, and is still, a towering ava- 
lanche of infidelity upon the Scriptures, but we enter- 
tain the hope that a little light, well concentrated, will 
melt those triumphantly-dancing white feathers into 
bitter tears of remorse. 

Then, instead of deprecating, let all Christians extol 
the geologist's infidel fossil god. Throw light about 
his birth, his life, and his way in Nature. Do not shun 
him, but cling to him as man clings to life. Set him up 
in the high-ways and by-ways, and insist that he is 



CONCLUDING ARGUMEMT. 302 

equal to his fellows. Drag him from the dirt, dust, 
and dark places of the earth, where he and his family 
have slumbered concealed, and show him through the 
world as among the brightest jewels which shine in 
the diadem of the King of glory ! 

And when the voices of the Christian world shall 
be heard on this point, as one man speaking, we may 
also hear the welcome sound, from the sentinels on 
the watch-towers of our Christian faith, proclaim — 
"What of the night'? — All's well!" 



THE END. 











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